No More Learning

Morley
displays his own insight into difficult problems of society and of poli-
tics. His modern habit of mind is shown in his appreciation of the
time-spirit as the most reliable interpreter of the phenomena of his-
tory. He is indeed a historical critic rather than a creator in the
domain of literature. He has used the essay more as a vehicle for his
political reflections than for itself as a literary product. He possesses,
however, ideals of style which are high, exacting, and comprehensive.
These are expressed in his clear, strong English, compactly fitted
to his thought. He has given to the literature of his century a not
inconsiderable body of vigorous and well-tempered prose.


## p. 10325 (#149) ##########################################

JOHN MORLEY
10325
ROUSSEAU AT MONTMORENCY
From Rousseau'
THE
HE many conditions of intellectual productiveness are still hid-
den in such profound obscurity that we are as yet unable
to explain why in certain natures a period of stormy moral
agitation seems to be the indispensable antecedent of their highest
creative effort. Byron is one instance, and Rousseau is another,
in which the current of stimulating force made rapid way from
the lower to the higher parts of character, only expending itself
after having traversed the whole range of emotion and faculty,
from their meanest, most realistic, most personal forms of exer-
cise, up to the summit of what is lofty and ideal. No man was
ever involved in such an odious complication of moral maladies
as beset Rousseau in the winter of 1758. Within three years of
this miserable epoch he had completed not only the 'New Heloïsa,'
which is the monument of his fall, but the 'Social Contract,'
which was the most influential, and 'Emilius,' which was perhaps
the most elevated and spiritual of all the productions of the pro-
lific genius of France in the eighteenth century. A poor light-
hearted Marmontel thought that the secret of Rousseau's success
lay in the circumstance that he began to write late; and it is true
that no other author so considerable as Rousseau waited until the
age of fifty for the full vigor of his inspiration. No tale of years,
however, could have ripened such fruit without native strength
and incommunicable savor; nor can the splendid mechanical move-
ment of those characters which keep the balance of the world
even, impart to literature the peculiar quality, peculiar but not
the finest, that comes from experience of the black and unlighted
abysses of the soul.
The period of actual production was externally calm. The
'New Heloïsa' was completed in 1759, and published in 1761.
The Social Contract' was published in the spring of 1762, and
'Emilius' a few weeks later. Throughout this period Rousseau
was, for the last time in his life, at peace with most of his fel-
lows; that is to say, though he never relented from his antipathy
to the Holbachians, for the time it slumbered, until a more real
and serious persecution than any which he imputed to them trans-
formed his antipathy into a gloomy frenzy.
The new friends whom he made at Montmorency were among
the greatest people in the kingdom. The Duke of Luxembourg


## p. 10326 (#150) ##########################################

10326
JOHN MORLEY
(1702-64) was a marshal of France, and as intimate a friend of
the King as the King was capable of having. The Maréchale de
Luxembourg (1707-87) had been one of the most beautiful, and
continued to be one of the most brilliant leaders of the last
aristocratic generation that was destined to sport on the slopes of
the volcano. The former seems to have been a loyal and homely
soul; the latter, restless, imperious, penetrating, unamiable. Their
dealings with Rousseau were marked by perfect sincerity and
straightforward friendship. They gave him a convenient apart-
ment in a small summer lodge in the park, to which he retreated
when he cared for a change from his narrow cottage. He was
a constant guest at their table, where he met the highest names
in France. The marshal did not disdain to pay him visits, or
to walk with him, or to discuss his private affairs. Unable as
ever to shine in conversation, yet eager to show his great friends
that they had to do with no common mortal, Rousseau bethought
him of reading the 'New Heloïsa' aloud to them. At ten in
the morning he used to wait upon the maréchale, and there by
her bedside he read the story of the love, the sin, the repent-
ance of Julie, the distraction of Saint Preux, the wisdom of Wol-
mar, and the sage friendship of Lord Edward, in tones which
enchanted her both with his book and its author for all the
rest of the day, as all the women in France were so soon to be
enchanted. This, as he expected, amply reconciled her to the
uncouthness and clumsiness of his conversation, which was at
least as maladroit and as spiritless in the presence of a duchess
as it was in presences less imposing.
One side of character is obviously tested by the way in which
a man bears himself in his relations with persons of greater con-
sideration. Rousseau was taxed by some of his plebeian enemies
with a most unheroic deference to his patrician friends. He had
a dog whose name was Duc. When he came to sit at a duke's
table, he changed his dog's name to Turc. Again, one day in a
transport of tenderness he embraced the old marshal - the duch-
ess embraced Rousseau ten times a day, for the age was effusive:
"Ah, monsieur le maréchal, I used to hate the great before I
knew you, and I hate them still more, since you make me feel
so strongly how easy it would be for them to have themselves
adored. " On another occasion he happened to be playing at
chess with the Prince of Conti, who had come to visit him in his
cottage. In spite of the signs and grimaces of the attendants, he


## p. 10327 (#151) ##########################################

JOHN MORLEY
10327
insisted on beating the prince in a couple of games. Then he
said with respectful gravity, "Monseigneur, I honor your Serene
Highness too much not to beat you at chess always. " A few
days after, the vanquished prince sent him a present of game,
which Rousseau duly accepted. The present was repeated; but
this time Rousseau wrote to Madame de Boufflers that he would
receive no more, and that he loved the prince's conversation
better than his gifts. He admits that this was an ungracious
proceeding; and that to refuse game "from a prince of the blood.
who throws so much good feeling into the present, is not so
much the delicacy of a proud man bent on preserving his inde-
pendence, as the rusticity of an unmannerly person who does not
know his place. " Considering the extreme virulence with which
Rousseau always resented gifts even of the most trifling kind
from his friends, we find some inconsistency in this condemna-
tion of a sort of conduct to which he tenaciously clung; unless
the fact of the donor being a prince of the blood is allowed to
modify the quality of the donation, and that would be a hardly
defensible position in the austere citizen of Geneva. Madame
de Boufflers, the intimate friend of our sage Hume, and the yet
more intimate friend of the Prince of Conti, gave him a judi-
cious warning when she bade him beware of laying himself open
to a charge of affectation, lest it should obscure the brightness
of his virtue, and so hinder its usefulness. "Fabius and Regulus
would have accepted such marks of esteem without feeling in
them any hurt to their disinterestedness and frugality. " Perhaps
there is a flutter of self-consciousness that is not far removed
from this affectation, in the pains which Rousseau takes to tell us
that after dining at the castle, he used to return home gleefully
to sup with a mason who was his neighbor and his friend. On
the whole, however, and so far as we know, Rousseau conducted
himself not unworthily with these high people. His letters to
them are for the most part marked by self-respect and a moder-
ate graciousness; though now and again he makes rather too
much case of the difference of rank, and asserts his independence
with something too much of protestation. Their relations with
him are a curious sign of the interest which the members of
the great world took in the men who were quietly preparing the
destruction both of them and their world. The Maréchale de
Luxembourg places this squalid dweller in a hovel on her estate
in the place of honor at her table, and embraces his Theresa.


## p. 10328 (#152) ##########################################

10328
JOHN MORLEY
The Prince of Conti pays visits of courtesy, and sends game
to a man whom he employs at a few sous an hour to copy
manuscript for him. The Countess of Boufflers, in sending him
the money, insists that he is to count her his warmest friend.
When his dog dies, the countess writes to sympathize with his
chagrin, and the prince begs to be allowed to replace it. And
when persecution and trouble and infinite confusion came upon
him, they all stood as fast by him as their own comfort would
allow. Do we not feel that there must have been in the un-
happy man, besides all the recorded pettinesses and perversities
which revolt us in him, a vein of something which touched men,
and made women devoted to him, until he drove both men and
women away? With Madame d'Epinay and Madame d'Houdetot,
as with the dearer and humbler patroness of his youth, we have
now parted company. But they are instantly succeeded by new
devotees. And the lovers of Rousseau, in all degrees, were not
silly women led captive by idle fancy. Madame de Boufflers was
one of the most distinguished spirits of her time. Her friend-
ship for him was such, that his sensuous vanity made Rousseau
against all reason or probability confound it with a warmer form;
and he plumes himself in a manner most displeasing on the vic-
tory which he won over his own feelings on the occasion.
As a
matter of fact he had no feelings to conquer, any more than the
supposed object of them ever bore him any ill-will for his indif-
ference, as in his mania of suspicion he afterwards believed.
There was a calm about the too few years he passed at Mont-
morency, which leaves us in doubt whether this mania would
ever have afflicted him, if his natural irritation had not been
made intense and irresistible by the cruel distractions that fol-
lowed the publication of 'Emilius. ' He was tolerably content
with his present friends. The simplicity of their way of dealing
with him contrasted singularly, as he thought, with the never-
ending solicitudes, as importunate as they were officious, of the
patronizing friends whom he had just cast off. Perhaps, too, he
was soothed by the companionship of persons whose rank may
have flattered his vanity, while unlike Diderot and his old literary
friends in Paris, they entered into no competition with him in the
peculiar sphere of his own genius. Madame de Boufflers, indeed,
wrote a tragedy; but he told her gruffly enough that it was a
plagiarism from Southerne's Oroonoko. ' That Rousseau was
thoroughly capable of this hateful emotion of sensitive literary


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JOHN MORLEY
10329
jealousy is proved, if by nothing else, by his readiness to suspect
that other authors were jealous of him. No one suspects others
of a meanness of this kind, unless he is capable of it himself.
The resounding success which followed the 'New Heloïsa' and
'Emilius' put an end to this apprehension, for it raised him
to a pedestal in popular esteem as high as that on which Vol-
taire stood triumphant. This very success unfortunately brought
troubles which destroyed Rousseau's last chance of ending his
days in full reasonableness.
Meanwhile he enjoyed his last interval of moderate whole-
someness and peace. He felt his old healthy joy in the green
earth. One of the letters commemorates his delight in the great
scudding southwest winds of February, soft forerunners of the
spring, so sweet to all who live with nature. At the end of his
garden was a summer-house, and here even on wintry days he sat
composing or copying. It was not music only that he copied.
He took a curious pleasure in making transcripts of his romance,
which he sold to the Duchess of Luxembourg and other ladies for
some moderate fee. Sometimes he moved from his own lodging
to the quarters in the park which his great friends had induced
him to accept. "They were charmingly neat; the furniture was of
white and blue. It was in this perfumed and delicious solitude,
in the midst of woods and streams and choirs of birds of every
kind, with the fragrance of the orange-flower poured round me,
that I composed in a continual ecstasy the fifth book of 'Emilius. '
With what eagerness did I hasten every morning at sunrise to
breathe the balmy air! What good coffee I used to take under the
porch in company with my Theresa! My cat and my dog made
the rest of our party. That would have sufficed for all my life,
and I should never have known weariness. And so to the as-
surance, so often repeated under so many different circumstances,
that here was a true heaven upon earth, where if fate had only
allowed, he would have known unbroken innocence and lasting
happiness.


## p. 10330 (#154) ##########################################

10330
JOHN MORLEY
CONDORCET
From Critical Miscellanies'
OⓇ
F THE illustrious thinkers and writers who for two genera-
tions had been actively scattering the seed of revolution in
France, only Condorcet survived to behold the first bitter
ingathering of the harvest. Those who had sown the wind were
no more; he only was left to see the reaping of the whirlwind,
and to be swiftly and cruelly swept away by it. Voltaire and
Diderot, Rousseau and Helvétius, had vanished; but Condorcet
both assisted at the Encyclopædia and sat in the Convention,—
the one eminent man of those who had tended the tree, who also
came in due season to partake of its fruit, at once a precursor,
and a sharer in the fulfillment. In neither character has he
attracted the good-will of any of those considerable sections and
schools into which criticism of the Revolution has been mainly
divided. As a thinker he is roughly classed as an Economist;
and as a practical politician he figured first in the Legislative
Assembly, and next in the Convention. Now, as a rule, the
political parties that have most admired the Convention have
had least sympathy with the Economists; and the historians who
are most favorable to Turgot and his followers are usually most
hostile to the actions and associations of the great revolutionary
chamber successively swayed by a Vergniaud, a Danton, a Robes-
pierre. Between the two, Condorcet's name has been allowed to
lie hidden for the most part in a certain obscurity, or else has
been covered with those taunts and innuendoes which partisans
are wont to lavish on men of whom they do not know exactly
whether they are with or against them.
Generally, the men of the Revolution are criticized in blocks.
and sections, and Condorcet cannot be accurately placed under
any of these received schools. He was an Economist, but he
was something more; for the most characteristic article in his
creed was a passionate belief in the infinite perfectibility of human
nature. He was more of a Girondin than a Jacobin, yet he
did not always act, any more than he always thought, with the
Girondins; and he did not fall when they fell, but was proscribed
by a decree specially leveled at himself. Isolation of this kind is
assuredly no merit in political action, but it explains the coldness
with which Condorcet's memory has been treated; and it flowed.
from some marked singularities both of character and opinion,


## p. 10331 (#155) ##########################################

JOHN MORLEY
10331
which are of the highest interest, if we consider the position of
the man, and the lustre of that ever-memorable time. « Condor-
cet," said D'Alembert, "is a volcano covered with snow. " Said
another, less picturesquely, "He is a sheep in a passion. " "You
may say of the intelligence of Condorcet in relation to his per-
son," wrote Madame Roland, "that it is a subtle essence soaked
in cotton. " The curious mixture disclosed by sayings like these,
of warm impulse and fine purpose with immovable reserve, only
shows that he of whom they were spoken belonged to the class
of natures which may be called non-conducting. They are not
effective, because without this effluence of power and feeling
from within, the hearer or onlooker is stirred by no sympathetic
thrill. They cannot be the happiest, because consciousness of the
inequality between expression and meaning, between the influence
intended and the impression conveyed, must be as tormenting as
to one who dreams is the vain effort to strike a blow. If to be
of this non-conducting temperament is impossible in the really
greatest sorts of men, like St. Paul, St. Bernard, or Luther, at
least it is no proper object of blame; for it is constantly the
companion of lofty and generous aspiration. It was perhaps
unfortunate that Condorcet should have permitted himself to be
drawn into a position where his want of that magical quality
by which even the loathed and loathsome Marat could gain the
sympathies of men, should be so conspicuously made visible.
Frankly, the character of Condorcet, unlike so many of his con-
temporaries, offers nothing to the theatrical instinct. None the
less on this account should we weigh the contributions which he
made to the stock of science and social speculation, and recog-
nize the fine elevation of his sentiments, his noble solicitude for
human well-being, his eager and resolute belief in its indefinite
expansion, and the devotion which sealed his faith by a destiny
that was as tragical as any in those bloody and most tragical
days.
I
UNTIL the outbreak of the Revolution, the circumstances of
Condorcet's life were as little externally disturbed or specially
remarkable as those of any other geometer and thinker of the
time. He was born in a small town in Picardy, in the year 1743.
His father was a cavalry officer; but as he died when his son was
only three years old, he could have exerted no influence upon the


## p. 10332 (#156) ##########################################

10332
JOHN MORLEY
future philosopher, save such as comes of transmission through
blood and tissue. Condillac was his uncle, but there is no record
of any intercourse between them. His mother was a devout and
trembling soul, who dedicated her child to the Holy Virgin, and
for eight years or more made him wear the dress of a little girl,
by way of sheltering him against the temptations and unbelief of
a vile world. So long as women are held by opinion and usage
in a state of educational and political subjection which prevents
the growth of a large intelligence, made healthy and energetic
by knowledge and by activity, we may expect to read of pious
extravagances of this kind. Condorcet was weakened physically
by much confinement and the constraint of cumbrous clothing;
and not even his dedication to the Holy Virgin prevented him
from growing up the most ardent of the admirers of Voltaire.
His earliest instructors, as happened to most of the skeptical phi-
losophers, were the Jesuits, then within a few years of their fall.
That these adroit men, armed with all the arts and traditions
which their order had acquired in three centuries, and with the
training of the nation almost exclusively in their hands, should
still have been unable to shield their persons from proscription
and their creed from hatred, is a remarkable and satisfactory in-
stance how little it avais ecclesiastical bodies to have a monopoly
of official education, if the spirit of their teaching be out of
harmony with those most potent agencies which we sum up as
the spirit of the time. The Jesuits were the great official teach-
ers of France for the first half of the eighteenth century. In
1764 the order was thrust forth from the country, and they left
behind them an army of the bitterest enemies Christianity has
ever had.
To do them justice, they were destroyed by weapons
which they had themselves supplied. The intelligence which
they had so honorably developed and sharpened, turned inevita-
bly against the incurable faults in their own system. They were
admirable teachers of mathematics. Condorcet, instructed by the
Jesuits at Rheims, was able, when he was only fifteen years old,
to go through such performances in analysis as to win especial
applause from illustrious judges like D'Alembert and Clairaut.
It was impossible, however, for Jesuits, as it has ever been for
all enemies of movement, to constrain within prescribed limits
the activity which has once been effectively stirred. Mathematics
has always been in the eyes of the Church a harmless branch of
knowledge; but the mental energy that mathematics first touched


## p. 10333 (#157) ##########################################

JOHN MORLEY
10333
is sure to turn itself by-and-by to more complex and dangerous
subjects in the scientific hierarchy.
At any rate, Condorcet's curiosity was very speedily drawn
to problems beyond those which geometry and algebra pretend to
solve. "For thirty years," he wrote in 1790, "I have hardly ever
passed a single day without meditating on the political sciences. "
Thus, when only seventeen, when the ardor of even the choicest
spirits is usually most purely intellectual, moral and social feeling
was rising in Condorcet to that supremacy which it afterwards
attained in him to so admirable a degree. He wrote essays on
integral calculus, but he was already beginning to reflect upon
the laws of human societies and the conditions of moral obliga-
tion. At the root of Condorcet's nature was a profound sensi-
bility of constitution. One of his biographers explains his early
enthusiasm for virtue and human welfare as the conclusion of
a kind of syllogism. It is possible that the syllogism was only
the later shape into which an instinctive impulse threw itself
by way of rational intrenchment. This sensibility caused Condor-
cet to abandon the barbarous pleasures of the chase, which had
at first powerfully attracted him. To derive delight from what
inflicts pain on any sentient creature revolted his conscience
and offended his reason; because he perceived that the character
which does not shrink from associating its own joy with the
anguish of another, is either found or left mortally blunted to
the finest impressions of humanity. It was this same sensibility,
fortified by reason, which drove him while almost still at school to
reflect, as he confided to Turgot he had done, on the moral ideas
of virtue and justice.
It is thus assured that from the beginning Condorcet was
unable to satisfy himself with the mere knowledge of the special-
ist, but felt the necessity of placing social aims at the head and
front of his life, and of subordinating to them all other pursuits.
That he values knowledge only as a means to social action, is
one of the highest titles to our esteem that any philosopher can
have. Such a temper of mind has penetrated no man more fully
than Condorcet, though there are other thinkers to whom time
and chance have been more favorable in making that temper
permanently productive. There is a fine significance in his words,
after the dismissal of the great and virtuous Turgot from office:
"We have had a delightful dream, but it was too brief. Now I
mean to apply myself to geometry. It is terribly cold to be for


## p. 10334 (#158) ##########################################

10334
JOHN MORLEY
the future laboring only for the gloriole, after flattering oneself
for a while that one was working for the public weal. " It is
true that a geometer, too, works for the public weal; but the
process is tardier, and we may well pardon an impatience that
sprung of reasoned zeal for the happiness of mankind. There is
something much more attractive about Condorcet's undisguised dis-
appointment at having to exchange active public labor for geo-
metrical problems, than in the affected satisfaction conventionally
professed by statesmen when driven from place to their books.
His correspondence shows that even when his mind seemed to
be most concentrated upon his special studies, he was incessantly
on the alert for every new idea, book, transaction, that was likely
to stimulate the love of virtue in individuals, or to increase the
strength of justice in society. It would have been, in one sense,
more fortunate for him to have cared less for high social inter-
ests, if we remember the contention of his latter days, and the
catastrophe which brought them to so frightful a close. But
Condorcet was not one of those natures who can think it happi-
ness to look passively out from the tranquil literary watch-tower
upon the mortal struggles of a society in a state of revolution.
In measuring other men of science -as his two volumes of
Eloges abundantly show-one cannot help being struck by the
eagerness with which he seizes on any trait of zeal for social
improvement, of anxiety that the lives and characters of our
fellows should be better worth having. He was himself too
absolutely possessed by this social spirit to have flinched from
his career, even if he had foreseen the martyrdom which was to
consummate it. "You are very happy," he once wrote to Tur-
got, "in your passion for the public good, and your power to
satisfy it; it is a great consolation, and of an order very superior
to that of study. "
In 1769, at the age of six-and-twenty, Condorcet became con-
nected with the Academy; to the mortification of his relations,
who hardly pardoned him for not being a captain of cavalry, as
his father had been before him. About the same time or a little
later, he performed a pilgrimage of a kind that could hardly help
making a mark upon a character so deeply impressible. In com-
pany with D'Alembert, he went to Ferney and saw Voltaire. To
the position of Voltaire in Europe in 1770 there has never been
any other man's position in any age wholly comparable. It is
true that there had been one or two of the great popes, and a
"


## p. 10335 (#159) ##########################################

JOHN MORLEY
10335
great ecclesiastic like St. Bernard, who had exercised a spiritual
authority, pretty universally submitted to, or even spontaneously
invoked, throughout western Europe. But these were the repre-
sentatives of a powerful organization and an accepted system.
Voltaire filled a place before men's eyes in the eighteenth cen-
tury as conspicuous and as authoritative as that of St. Bernard in
the twelfth. The difference was that Voltaire's place was abso-
lutely unofficial in its origin, and indebted to no system nor
organization for its maintenance. Again, there have been others,
like Bacon or Descartes, destined to make a far more permanent
contribution to the ideas which have extended the powers and
elevated the happiness of men; but these great spirits for the
most part labored for the generation that followed them, and won
comparatively slight recognition from their own age. Voltaire,
during his life, enjoyed to the full not only the admiration that
belongs to the poet, but something of the veneration that is paid
to the thinker, and even something of the glory usually reserved
for captains and conquerors of renown. No other man before
or since ever hit so exactly the mark of his time on every side,
sɔ precisely met the conditions of fame for the moment, nor so
thoroughly dazzled and reigned over the foremost men and women
who were his contemporaries. Wherever else intellectual fame
has approached the fame of Voltaire, it has been posthumous.
With him it was immediate and splendid. Into the secret of
this extraordinary circumstance we need not here particularly
inquire. He was an unsurpassed master of the art of literary
expression in a country where that art is more highly prized
than anywhere else; he was the most brilliant of wits among a
people whose relish for wit is a supreme passion; he won the
admiration of the lighter souls by his plays, of the learned by his
interest in science, of the men of letters by his never-ceasing
flow of essays, criticisms, and articles, not one of which lacks
vigor and freshness and sparkle; he was the most active, bitter,
and telling foe of what was then the most justly abhorred of
all institutions, the Church. Add to these remarkable titles to
honor and popularity that he was no mere declaimer against
oppression and injustice in the abstract, but the strenuous, perse-
vering, and absolutely indefatigable champion of every victim of
oppression or injustice whose case was once brought under his
eye.


## p. 10336 (#160) ##########################################

10336
JOHN MORLEY
THE CHURCH AND THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA'
From 'Diderot and the Encyclopædists'
HE Church had known how to deal with intellectual insur-
THE gents, from Abélard in the twelfth century down to Gior-
dano Bruno and Vanini in the seventeenth. They were
isolated; they were for the most part submissive; and if they
were not, the arm of the Church was very long, and her grasp
mortal. And all these meritorious precursors were made weak
by one cardinal defect, for which no gifts of intellectual acuteness
could compensate. They had the scientific idea, but they lacked
the social idea.
·
After the middle of the last century, the insurrection against
the pretensions of the Church, and against the doctrines of Christ-
ianity, was marked in one of its most important phases by a new
and most significant feature. In this phase it was animated at
once by the scientific idea and by the social idea.
Its
leaders surveyed the entire field with as much accuracy, and with
as wide a range, as their instruments allowed; and they scattered
over the world a set of ideas which at once entered into ener
getic rivalry with the ancient scheme of authority. The great
symbol of this new comprehensiveness in the insurrection was the
'Encyclopædia. '
•
•
The Encyclopædia' was virtually a protest against the old
organization, no less than against the old doctrine. Broadly
stated, the great central moral of it all was this: that human
nature is good, that the world is capable of being made a desir-
able abiding-place, and that the evil of the world is the fruit of
bad education and bad institutions. This cheerful doctrine now
strikes on the ear as a commonplace and a truism. A hundred
years ago in France it was a wonderful gospel, and the begin-
ning of a new dispensation. It was the great counter-principle to
asceticism in life and morals, to formalism in art, to absolutism.
in the social ordering, to obscurantism in thought. Every social
improvement since has been the outcome of that doctrine in one.
form or another. The conviction that the character and lot of
man are indefinitely modifiable for good, was the indispensable
antecedent to any general and energetic endeavor to modify the
conditions that surround him,


## p. 10337 (#161) ##########################################

10337
WILLIAM MORRIS
XVIII-647
(1834-1896)
BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE
ILLIAM MORRIS was a man of such varied activities and exu-
berant vitality, that an account of his career as a man of
letters can give but an inadequate impression of his person-
ality. The present sketch, however, must be restricted to the single
aspect of his life by virtue of which he won a place among the
greatest English writers of the nineteenth century; and may mention,
thereafter only to ignore them, his epoch-
making work as a decorative designer, his
revival of the well-nigh lost art of printing
beautiful books, and the socialist propa-
ganda which he carried on for so many
years, and with so much of fiery energy.
All of these things belong to the character
of the man rather than of the poet; and it
is with the poet alone that we are now
concerned.

With a volume entitled The Defence
of Guenevere, and Other Poems,' published
in 1858, Morris made his first appearance in
literature. At this time the fame of Tenny-
son as the greatest of Victorian poets was
fully established; the fame of Browning, with fifteen volumes already
to his credit, was rapidly growing; and the chief poetical work of
Matthew Arnold had already been produced.
The affinities of the
new poet were, however, with none of these masters, but rather with
two men whose voices were yet to be heard. It was not until 1861
that Swinburne published 'The Queen Mother' and 'Rosamund,'
to be followed in 1864 by Atalanta in Calydon,' in 1865 by Chaste-
lard,' and in 1866 by the famous first series of Poems and Ballads. '
As for Rossetti, while it is true that some of the most characteris-
tic of his youthful pieces had appeared in the Germ as early as
1850, yet it was not until 1870 that the manuscript collection of his
'Poems' was exhumed from the grave of his wife, and given to the
world.
WILLIAM MORRIS


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10338
WILLIAM MORRIS
Thus we see that Morris must be considered the pioneer of the
poetical movement with which these three men are chiefly identified.
Whether we give them the vague title of Pre-Raphaelites, or of
apostles of mediævalism, or of representatives of the stained-glass
school of poetry, it is evident that they were united, at least in their
earlier years, by the possession of common ideals and a common in-
spiration. The fact is also worth noting that 'The Defence of Guen-
evere,' a considerable section of which deals with material taken from
the cycle of Arthurian legend, was published in the year that gave
birth to the first group of Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King. ' A com-
parison of these two volumes is instructive; for it shows how diver-
gent were the aims of Tennyson's exquisite but sophisticated art and
the simpler and bolder art of the new poet. In diction, in emotional
color, and in envisagement of the period with which both are con-
cerned, the two works are very sharply contrasted: that of Tennyson
embodies the last and most subtle refinement of a continuous literary
tradition, while that of Morris harks back to earlier modes of thought
and expression, and sacrifices the conventional trappings of modern
song in order to reproduce with more of vital truthfulness the spirit of
a vanished past. This point must be insisted upon, because it differ-
entiates, not merely the two singers that have been named, but the
two groups to which they respectively belong; and because it offers
what justification there may be for the epithet "Pre-Raphaelite" so
frequently applied to one of the groups. As the genius of Morris
developed, his art became far finer; but it retained to the last those
qualities of simplicity and sincerity that had informed it in its be-
ginnings.
The distinctive achievement of Morris in English poetry is that of
a story-teller by right divine-such a story-teller as Chaucer alone
had been before him. But although the poet himself pays tribute to
«that mastery
That from the rose-hung lanes of woody Kent
Through these five hundred years such songs have sent
To us, who, meshed within this smoky net
Of unrejoicing labor, love them yet,"
yet the parallel may not be carried very far. Morris lacks the wit,
the shrewdness, the practical good sense, and the dramatic faculty of
Chaucer: he has instead the sentiment of romance in a heightened
degree, the sense of pure beauty in nature and in life, the melan-
cholic strain of a "dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,"
and taking refuge in an idealized golden age of the past from a vain
effort "to set the crooked straight" in this modern workaday world.
As a story-teller in verse, Morris conquered the public with 'The


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WILLIAM MORRIS
10339
Life and Death of Jason' (1867), and 'The Earthly Paradise' (1868–70).
'The Earthly Paradise' is a cycle of twenty-four narrative poems
with a prologue. "Certain gentlemen and mariners of Norway," so
runs the argument, "having considered all that they had heard of the
Earthly Paradise, set sail to find it: and after many troubles and the
lapse of many years, came old men to some Western land, of which
they had never before heard; there they died, when they had dwelt
there certain years, much honored of the strange people. " The land
in which these "mariners of Norway" found their final haven was
inhabited by a people descended from the ancient Greeks, and in-
heriting the poetical traditions of their race. After their guests had
tarried with them for a while, they were thus addressed by the chief
priest of the land:
--
"Dear guests, the year begins to-day;
And fain are we, before it pass away,
To hear some tales of that now altered world,
Wherefrom our fathers in old time were hurled
By the hard hands of fate and destiny.
Nor would ye hear perchance unwillingly
How we have dealt with stories of the land
Wherein the tombs of our forefathers stand;
Wherefore henceforth two solemn feasts shall be
In every month, at which some history
Shall crown our joyance. »
The scheme is thus provided for the story-telling; and for a whole
year the elders of the land alternate with the wanderers in recount-
ing legendary tales. The former choose for their themes such stories
as those of Atalanta, Alcestis, Cupid and Psyche, and Pygmalion and
Galatea; the latter explore the rich fields of medieval romance, and
tell of Ogier the Dane, Gudrun and her lovers, the search for "the
land east of the sun and west of the moon," and the fateful history
of Tannhäuser. The twenty-four tales thus linked together are given
in a variety of poetical forms, and differ greatly in length. They are
"full of soft music and familiar olden charm," to use Mr. Stedman's
felicitous phrase; they blend clearness of poetic vision with the sense
of wonder; they are fresh, pathetic, vividly picturesque, and the loveli-
ness of their best passages is beyond all praise. Of the earlier 'Life
and Death of Jason' it should be said that the poem was originally
planned to fill a place in The Earthly Paradise,' but so outgrew the
author's purpose as to make a volume of itself.
The poetical work subsequently produced by Morris comprises the
following volumes: Love is Enough, a Morality' (1872), The Story of
Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs' (1876), and 'Poems
by the Way' (1892). In the opinion of Morris himself, as well as in


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10340
WILLIAM MORRIS
that of most of his critics, the epic of Sigurd' is the greatest of
his works. Mr. William Sharp has written of this poem in the fol-
lowing terms:
-
"In this great work we come upon William Morris as the typical sagaman
of modern literature. The breath of the North blows across these billowy
lines as the polar wind across the green waves of the North Sea. The noise
of waters, the splashing of oars, the whirling of swords, the conflict of battle,
cries and heroic summons to death, re-echo in the ears. All the romance
which gives so wonderful an atmosphere to his earlier poems, all the dreamy
sweetness of 'The Earthly Paradise' and creations such as 'Love is Enough,'
are here also; but with them are a force, a vigor and intensity, of which, save
in his translation of the Odyssey,' there are few prior indications. "
The eight or ten volumes of imperishably beautiful verse thus far
described, constitute one of the chief glories of the Victorian era;
but they still represent only a part of the prodigious literary achieve-
ment of William Morris. Another phase of his genius, second in
importance only to the one just under discussion, is illustrated by
the series of romances in prose and verse that were produced during
the last seven years of his life. Having lived so long in the world
of medieval romancers and sagamen, he began in 1889 to write sagas
and medieval romances of his own; and may almost be said to have
enriched English literature with a new form of composition. The
more important of these works are The House of the Wolfings'
(1889), The Roots of the Mountains' (1890), The Story of the Glit-
tering Plain' (1891), The Wood Beyond the World' (1894), and The
Well at the World's End' (1896). Two others -The Water of the
Wondrous Isles' and 'The Sundering Flood'—were left for posthu-
mous publication. These romances show, even better than his poetry,
how deeply Morris penetrated into the essential spirit of medieval-
ism. As far as material goes, they are pure inventions; and the
reader marvels at the imaginative wealth which they display. Some-
times, as in 'The House of the Wolfings,' they afford an insight into
that early life of our Teutonic ancestors of which Tacitus gives us
a few glimpses; but their scenes for the most part are laid in some
land "east of the sun and west of the moon, >>>> to which the poet
alone has access. They take us back to the springtime of the world,
as the sagamen and the romancers conceived of it; and unfold to
us vistas of sheer delight. They tell us of noble men and lovely
women, of perilous guests and heroic deeds; they are tinged with
the melancholy that must ever be a residuum in the contemplative
modern mind, however objective its grasp; but the subtle perplex-
ities of modern life are left far behind. In form, they mingle act-
ual verse with a sort of poetic prose that is not marred by cæsuric
effects; having, as Mr. Watts-Dunton says, "the concrete figures and


## p. 10341 (#165) ##########################################

WILLIAM MORRIS
10341
impassioned diction that are the poet's vehicle," but entering into no
competition with works of acknowledged metrical structure.
If Morris were not a great original poet and romancer, his fame
would still be secure as one of the greatest of English translators.
He gave us the 'Eneid' in 1876, the Odyssey' in 1887, 'Beowulf'
in 1895, and a long series of Icelandic sagas during the last quarter-
century of his life. He held with Pope that "the fire of a poem is
what a translator should principally regard"; and in dealing with a
foreign masterpiece, he felt that his first duty was to convert it into
an English poem. Hence his Virgil has little value as a "crib,"
and his Homer is almost as free as Chapman's version. But he was
more completely in his element when dealing with Teutonic materi-
als, and his 'Beowulf' and Icelandic sagas must be reckoned among
the classics of English translation. His Icelandic work includes the
'Grettis Saga' (1869), the Völsunga Saga' (1870), 'Three Northern
Love Stories and Other Tales' (1875), and the volumes of 'The Saga
Library,' prepared in collaboration with Professor Eirikr Magnusson.
This 'Library' was begun in 1891, and projected upon a liberal scale.
Five volumes were published; the first of which includes three of the
shorter sagas, the second gives us The Story of the Ere-Dwellers'
(Eyrbyggja Saga) and The Story of the Heath-Slayings,' while the
remaining three contain a nearly complete translation of the 'Heims-
kringla' of Snorri Sturluson,- 'The Stories of the Kings of Norway
Called the Round World. ' In these translations we have a fortunate
union of Professor Magnusson's exact scholarship with the literary
instinct of Morris- an instinct trained by long association with Ice-
landic themes, and long practice in the semi-archaic diction which is
so happily made use of in these remarkable versions. Besides these
translations, mention must be made, among the poet's miscellaneous
writings, of 'Hopes and Fears for Art' (1881), 'A Dream of John Ball'
(1888), News from Nowhere' (1892), and the work called 'Socialism,
its Growth and Outcome,' which was written in conjunction with Mr.
Belfort Bax.
In the creative work which constitutes, after all, the great bulk
of the literary output of William Morris, one is most impressed by
the insistence with which the note of pure beauty is sounded. The
poet was not insensible of "problems," as his socialistic writing
amply shows; but literature took him clean away from them, and
into a world which he might shape "nearer to the heart's desire"
than this modern world of restless striving after more or less ignoble
ends. When we get into the region of The Earthly Paradise' or of
the prose romances, it is, to use Whitman's fine phrase, "as if no
artifice of business, fashion, politics, had ever been. " It is a world in
which we may find the beguilement of all weariness, and refresh our


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10342
WILLIAM MORRIS
faith in the simpler virtues and the unsophisticated life. It is good
for the spirit to take refuge at times in such a world; and those
who have once breathed its healing airs will not fail in gratitude to
the magician who led them to its confines, and bade them enter into
its delights.
Etterlayer
SHAMEFUL DEATH
HERE were four of us about that bed:
The mass-priest knelt at the side,
I and his mother stood at the head,
Over his feet lay the bride;
We were quite sure that he was dead,
Though his eyes were open wide.
THE
He did not die in the night,
He did not die in the day;
But in the morning twilight
His spirit passed away,
When neither sun nor moon was bright,
And the trees were merely gray.
He was not slain with the sword,
Knight's axe, or the knightly spear,
Yet spoke he never a word
After he came in here;
I cut away the cord
From the neck of my brother dear.
He did not strike one blow,
For the recreants came behind,
In a place where the hornbeams grow,-
A path right hard to find,
For the hornbeam boughs swing so
That the twilight makes it blind.
They lighted a great torch then,
When his arms were pinioned fast,
Sir John, the Knight of the Fen,
Sir Guy of the Dolorous Blast,


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WILLIAM MORRIS
10343
With knights threescore and ten,
Hung brave Lord Hugh at last.
I am threescore and ten,
And my hair is all turned gray;
But I met Sir John of the Fen
Long ago on a summer day,—
And am glad to think of the moment when
I took his life away.
I am threescore and ten,
And my strength is mostly passed;
But long ago I and my men,
When the sky was overcast,
And the smoke rolled over the reeds of the fen,
Slew Guy of the Dolorous Blast.
And now, knights all of you,
I pray you, pray for Sir Hugh,
A good knight and a true;
And for Alice, his wife, pray too.
HALLBLITHE DWELLETH IN THE WOOD ALONE
From The Story of the Glittering Plain'
O
N THE Morrow they arose betimes, and broke their fast on
that woodland victual, and then went speedily down the
mountain-side; & Hallblithe saw by the clear morning light
that it was indeed the Uttermost House which he had seen across
the green waste. So he told the seekers; but they were silent
and heeded naught, because of a fear that had come upon them,
lest they should die before they came into that good land. At
the foot of the mountain they came upon a river, deep but
not wide, with low grassy banks; and Hallblithe, who was an
exceeding strong swimmer, helped the seekers over without much
ado, and there they stood upon the grass of that goodly waste.
Hallblithe looked on them to note if any change should come
over them, and he deemed that already they were become
stronger and of more avail. But he spake naught thereof, and
strode on toward the Uttermost House, even as that other day
he had stridden away from it. Such diligence they made, that
it was but little after noon when they came to the door thereof.


## p. 10344 (#168) ##########################################

10344
WILLIAM MORRIS
Then Hallblithe took the horn and blew upon it, while his fel-
lows stood by murmuring, "It is the Land! It is the Land! "
So came the Warden to the door clad in red scarlet, and the
elder went up to him and said, "Is this the Land? ”
« What
Land? " said the Warden. "Is it the Glittering Plain ? " said the
second of the seekers. "Yea, forsooth," said the Warden. Said
the sad man, "Will ye lead us to the King? " "Ye shall come
to the King," said the Warden. "When, oh, when? " cried they
out all three. "The morrow of to-morrow, maybe," said the
Warden. "Oh! if to-morrow were but come! " they cried. “It
will come," said the red man: "enter ye the house. and eat and
drink and rest you. "
So they entered, and the Warden heeded Hallblithe nothing.
They ate and drank and then went to their rest; and Hallblithe
lay in a shut-bed off from the hall, but the Warden brought
the seekers otherwhere, so that Hallblithe saw them not after
he had gone to bed; but as for him, he slept and forgot that
aught was. In the morning when he awoke he felt very strong
and well-liking; and he beheld his limbs that they were clear
of skin and sleek and fair; and he heard one hard by in the
hall caroling and singing joyously. So he sprang from his bed
with the wonder of sleep yet in him, and drew the curtains of
the shut-bed and looked forth into the hall: and lo! on the high-
seat a man of thirty winters by seeming, tall, fair of fashion,
with golden hair and eyes as gray as glass, proud and noble of
aspect; and anigh him sat another man of like age to look on,
-a man strong and burly, with short curling brown hair and a
red beard, and ruddy countenance, and the mien of a warrior.
Also, up & down the hall, paced a man younger of aspect than
these two, tall and slender, black-haired & dark-eyed, amorous
of countenance; he it was who was singing a snatch of song as
he went lightly on the hall pavement,—a snatch like to this:
FAIR is the world, now autumn's wearing,
And the sluggard sun lies long abed;
Sweet are the days, now winter's nearing,
And all winds feign that the wind is dead.
Dumb is the hedge where the crabs hang yellow,
Bright as the blossoms of the spring;
Dumb is the close where the pears grow mellow,
And none but the dauntless red breast sing.


## p. 10345 (#169) ##########################################

WILLIAM MORRIS
10345
Fair was the spring, but amidst his greening
Gray were the days of the hidden sun;
Fair was the summer, but overweening,
So soon his o'er-sweet days were done.
Come then, love, for peace is upon us;
Far off is failing, and far is fear,
Here where the rest in the end hath won us
In the garnering tide of the happy year.
Come from the gray old house by the water.
Where, far from the lips of the hungry sea,
Green groweth the grass o'er the field of the slaughter,
And all is a tale for thee and me.
So Hallblithe did on his raiment and went into the hall; &
when those three saw him, they smiled upon him kindly and
greeted him; and the noble man at the board said: "Thanks
have thou, O Warrior of the Raven, for thy help in our need;
thy reward from us shall not be lacking. Then the brown-
haired man came up to him, and clapped him on the back and
said to him: "Brisk man of the Raven, good is thy help at
need; even so shall be mine to thee henceforward. " But the
young man stepped up to him lightly, and cast his arms about
him, and kissed him, and said: "O friend and fellow, who know-
eth but I may one day help thee as thou hast holpen me?
though thou art one who by seeming mayst well help thyself.
And now mayst thou be as merry as I am to-day! " Then they
all three cried out joyously: "It is the Land! It is the Land! "
So Hallblithe knew that these men were the two elders and the
sad man of yesterday, and that they had renewed their youth.
Joyously now did those men break their fast; nor did Hallblithe
make any grim countenance, for he thought, "That which these
dotards and drivelers have been mighty enough to find, shall I
not be mighty enough to flee from? " Breakfast done, the seek-
ers made little delay, so eager as they were to behold the King,
and to have handsel of their new sweet life. So they got them.
ready to depart, and the once-captain said: "Art thou able to
lead us to the King, O Raven-son, or must we seek another man
to do so much for us? " Said Hallblithe: "I am able to lead
you so nigh unto Wood-end (where, as I deem, the King abideth)
that ye shall not miss him. " Therewith they went to the door,


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10346
WILLIAM MORRIS
and the Warden unlocked to them, & spake no word to them
when they departed, though they thanked him kindly for the
guesting. When they were without the garth, the young man
fell to running about the meadow, plucking great handfuls of the
rich flowers that grew about, singing & caroling the while. But
he who had been king looked up and down and round about,
and said at last: "Where be the horses and the men? " But his
fellow with the red beard said: "Raven-son, in this land when
they journey, what do they as to riding or going afoot? " Said
Hallblithe: "Fair fellows, ye shall wot that in this land folk
go afoot for the most part, both men and women; whereas they
weary but little, and are in no haste. " Then the once-captain
clapped the once-king on the shoulder, and said: "Hearken, lord,
and delay no longer, but gird up thy gown, since here is no
mare's son to help thee; for fair is to-day that lies before us,
with many a fair new day beyond it. " So Hallblithe led the
way inward, thinking of many things, yet but little of his fel-
lows. Albeit they, and the younger man especially, were of many
words; for this black-haired man had many questions to ask,
chiefly concerning the women, what they were like to look on,
and of what mood they were. Hallblithe answered thereto as long
as he might, but at last he laughed and said: "Friend, forbear
thy questions now; for meseemeth in a few hours thou shalt be
as wise hereon as is the god of love himself. "
So they made diligence along the road, and all was tiding-
less till on the second day at even they came to the first house
off the waste. There had they good welcome, and slept. But
on the morrow when they arose, Hallblithe spake to the seek-
ers, and said: "Now are things much changed betwixt us since
the time when we first met; for then I had all my desire, as
I thought, and ye had but one desire, and well-nigh lacked hope
of its fulfillment. Whereas now the lack hath left you and
come to me. Wherefore even as time agone ye might not abide
even one night at the House of the Raven, so hard as your
desire lay on you,-
even so it fareth with me to-day, that I am
consumed with my desire, and I may not abide with you; lest
that befall which befalleth betwixt the full man and the fasting.
Wherefore now I bless you & depart. " They abounded in words
of goodwill to him, and the once-king said: "Abide with us,
and we shall see to it that thou have all the dignities that a
man may think of. " And the once-captain said: "Lo, here is mine
-


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WILLIAM MORRIS
10347
hand that hath been mighty; never shalt thou lack it for the ac-
complishment of thine uttermost desire: abide with us. "
Lastly said the young man: "Abide with us, Son of the
Raven! Set thine heart on a fair woman, yea even were it the
fairest, and I will get her for thee; yea, even were my desire
set on her. " But he smiled on them, and shook his head, and
said: "All hail to you! but mine errand is yet undone. ” And
therewith he departed. He skirted Wood-end and came not to it,
but got him down to the side of the sea, not far from where he
first came aland, but somewhat south of it. A fair oak-wood came
down close to the beach of the sea; it was some four miles end-
long and over-thwart. Thither Hallblithe betook him, and in a
day or two got him woodwright's tools from a house of men a
little outside the wood, three miles from the sea-shore. Then he
set to work and built him a little frame house on a lawn of the
wood beside a clear stream; for he was a very deft woodwright.
Withal he made him a bow & arrows, and shot what he would
of the fowl and the deer for his livelihood; and folk from that
house and otherwhence came to see him, & brought him bread
and wine and spicery and other matters which he needed. And
the days wore, and men got used to him, and loved him as if he
had been a rare image which had been brought to that land for
its adornment; & now they no longer called him the Spearman,
but the Wood-lover. And as for him, he took all in patience,
abiding what the lapse of days should bring forth.
ICELAND FIRST SEEN
O FROM our loitering ship
Ľ
a new land at last to be seen;
Toothed rocks down the side of the firth,
on the east guard a weary wide lea,
And black slope the hillsides above,
striped adown with their desolate green:
And a peak rises up on the west
from the meeting of cloud and sea,
Foursquare from base unto point
like the building of gods that have been,-
The last of that waste of the mountains
all cloud-wreathed and snow-flecked and gray,
And bright with the dawn that began
just now at the ending of day.


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10348
WILLIAM MORRIS
Ah! what came we forth for to see,
that our hearts are so hot with desire?
Is it enough for our rest,
the sight of this desolate strand,
And the mountain waste voiceless as death
but for winds that may sleep not nor tire?
Why do we long to wend forth
through the length and breadth of a land
Dreadful with grinding of ice
and record of scarce hidden fire,
But that there 'mid the gray grassy dales
sore scarred by the ruining streams
Lives the tale of the Northland of old
and the undying glory of dreams?
O land, as some cave by the sea
where the treasures of old have been laid,
The sword it may be of a king
whose name was the turning of fight;
Or the staff of some wise of the world
that many things made and unmade;
Or the ring of a woman, maybe,
whose woe is grown wealth and delight:
No wheat and no wine grows above it,
no orchard for blossom and shade;
The few ships that sail by its blackness
but deem it the mouth of a grave;
Yet sure when the world shall awaken,
this too shall be mighty to save.
Or rather, O land, if a marvel
it seemeth that men ever sought
Thy wastes for a field and a garden
fulfilled of all wonder and doubt,
And feasted amidst of the winter
when the fight of the year had been fought,
Whose plunder all gathered together
was little to babble about,
Cry aloud from thy wastes, O thou land,
"Not for this nor for that was I wrought.
Amid waning of realms and of riches
and death of things worshiped and sure.
I abide here the spouse of a God,
and I made and I make and endure. "


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WILLIAM MORRIS
10349
O Queen of the grief without knowledge,
of the courage that may not avail,
Of the longing that may not attain,
of the love that shall never forget,
More joy than the gladness of laughter
thy voice hath amidst of its wail;
More hope than of pleasure fulfilled
amidst of thy blindness is set;
More glorious than gaining of all
thine unfaltering hand that shall fail:
For what is the mark on thy brow
but the brand that thy Brynhild doth bear?
Lone once, and loved and undone
by a love that no ages outwear.
Ah! when thy Balder comes back
And bears from the heart of the sun
Peace and the healing of pain,
and the wisdom that waiteth no more;
And the lilies are laid on thy brow
'mid the crown of the deeds thou hast done;
And the roses spring up by thy feet
that the rocks of the wilderness wore:
Ah! when thy Balder comes back
and we gather the gains he hath won,
Shall we not linger a little
to talk of thy sweetness of old,
Yea, turn back awhile to thy travail
whence the Gods stood aloof to behold?
INTRODUCTION TO THE EARTHLY PARADISE'
F HEAVEN or hell I have no power to sing;
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
OⓇ
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day.
But rather, when aweary of your mirth,
From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,
And, feeling kindly unto all the earth,
Grudge every minute as it passes by,
Made the more mindful that the sweet days die,-


## p. 10350 (#174) ##########################################

10350
WILLIAM MORRIS
Remember me a little then, I pray,
The idle singer of an empty day.
The heavy trouble, the bewildering care
That weighs us down who live and earn our bread,
These idle verses have no power to bear;
So let me sing of names remembered,
Because they, living not, can ne'er be dead,
Or long time take their memory quite away
From us poor singers of an idle day.
Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,
Telling a tale not too importunate
To those who in the sleepy region stay,
Lulled by the singer of an empty day.
Folks say, a wizard to a northern king
At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show,
That through one window men beheld the spring,
And through another saw the summer glow,
And through a third the fruited vines arow,
While still, unheard, but in its wonted way,
Piped the drear wind of that December day.
So with this Earthly Paradise it is,
If ye will read aright, and pardon me,
Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss
Midmost the beating of the steely sea,
Where tossed about all hearts of men must be;
Whose ravening monsters mighty men shall slay,
Not the poor singer of an empty day.
FROM L'ENVOI OF THE EARTHLY PARADISE'
ERE are we for the last time face to face,
H
Thou and I, Book, before I bid thee speed
Upon thy perilous journey to that place
For which I have done on thee pilgrim's weed,
Striving to get thee all things for thy need.
Though what harm if thou die upon the way,
Thou idle singer of an empty day?


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WILLIAM MORRIS
10351
But though this land desired thou never reach,
Yet folk who know it mayst thou meet or death;
Therefore a word unto thee would I teach
To answer these, who, noting thy weak breath,
Thy wandering eyes, thy heart of little faith,
May make thy fond desire a sport and play,
Mocking the singer of an empty day.
That land's name, say'st thou? and the road thereto ?
Nay, Book, thou mockest, saying thou know'st it not;
Surely no book of verse I ever knew
But ever was the heart within him hot
To gain the Land of Matters Unforgot:
There, now we both laugh-as the whole world may,
At us poor singers of an empty day.
Nay, let it pass, and hearken! Hast thou heard
That therein I believe I have a friend,
Of whom for love I may not be afeard?
It is to him indeed I bid thee wend;
Yea, he perchance may meet thee ere thou end,
Dying so far off from the hedge of bay,
Thou idle singer of an empty day!
Well, think of him, I bid thee, on the road,
And if it hap that midst of thy defeat,
Fainting beneath thy follies' heavy load,
My Master, GEOFFREY CHAUCER, thou do meet,
Then shalt thou win a space of rest full sweet;
Then be thou bold, and speak the words I say,
The idle singer of an empty day! .
·
Fearest thou, Book, what answer thou may'st gain,
Lest he should scorn thee, and thereof thou die ?
Nay, it shall not be. -Thou may'st toil in vain,
And never draw the House of Fame anigh;
Yet he and his shall know whereof we cry,-
Shall call it not ill done to strive to lay
The ghosts that crowd about life's empty day
Then let the others go! and if indeed
In some old garden thou and I have wrought,
And made fresh flowers spring up from hoarded seed,
And fragrance of old days and deeds have brought
Back to folk weary,- all was not for naught.
No little part it was for me to play-
The idle singer of an empty day.


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10352
WILLIAM MORRIS
L
THE BLUE CLOSET
THE DAMOZELS
ADY ALICE, Lady Louise,
Between the wash of the tumbling seas
We are ready to sing, if so ye please;
So lay your long hands on the keys:
Sing, "Laudate pueri. "
And ever the great bell overhead
Boomed in the wind a knell for the dead,-
Though no one tolled it, a knell for the dead.
LADY LOUISE
Sister, let the measure swell
Not too loud; for you sing not well
If you drown the faint boom of the bell:
He is weary, so am I.
And ever the chevron overhead
Flapped on the banner of the dead.