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EACH VOLUME SOLD SEPARATELY.




COLLECTION

OF



BRITISH AUTHORS



TAICHNITZ EDITION.



VOL. 2378.
POEMS BY WILLIAM MORRIS

IN ONE VOLUME.




LEIPZIG: BEllNHARl) TAUCHNITZ.

PARIS: C, REIKWALD, l5, RUE DES SAINTS PERES.

PARIS : THE GALIGNANI LIBRARY, 224, RUE DE RIVOLI
AKD AT NICE, 15, QUAI MASSENA.



This Collection

is published loith copyright fo)' Continental circulation, hut all

purchasers are earnestly requested not to introduce the volumes

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Ai



9'



10



COLLECTION

OF

BRITISH AUTHOES

TAUCHNITZ EDITION.

VOL. 2378.
POEMS BY WILLIAM MOKRIS.

IN ONE VOLTIlfE.



A SELECTION

FROM

THE POEMS

OF

WILLIAM MORRIS



WITH A MEMOIR

BY FRANCIS HUEFFER. \

COPYRIGHT EDITION.



LEIPZIG

BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ

1886.

The Right cj Transiation is reserved.



MEMOIR

OF

WILLIAM MORRIS.

William Morris, poet, decorative designer and
socialist, was born in 1834 at Clay Street, Waltham-
stow, now almost a suburb of London, at that time a
country village in Essex. He went to school at Marl-
borough College and thence to Exeter College, Oxford,
where he took his degree in 1857. During his stay
in the University the subsequent mode of his life was
prepared and foreshadowed in two important direc-
tions. Like most poets Morris was not what is
called very assiduous "at his book"; the routine
of college training was no more an attraction to
him than the ordinary amusements and dissipations
of undergraduate existence. But he was studious all
the same, reading the classics in his own somewhat
spasmodic way and exploring with even greater zeal
the mysteries of mediaeval lore. His fellow-worker
in these studies and his most intimate friend was and
is at the present day Mr. Burne Jones, the famous
painter, at that time a student of divinity. Artistic
and literary pursuits thus went hand in hand, and



6 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM MORRIS.

received additional zest when the two young men be-
came acquainted with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Holman
Hunt and other painters of the Pre-Raphaelite school
who came to Oxford to execute the frescoes still dimly-
visible on the ceiling of the Union Debating Hall.
Of the aims and achievements of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, and of the revival of mediaeval feeling in
art and literature originally advocated by its members
ample account has been given in the memoir of Rossetti
prefixed to his poems in the Tauchnitz edition. Its
influence on Morris's early work, both in matter and
form, will strike every observant reader of the opening
ballads of the present collection. Later on the poet
worked out for himself a distinct and individual phase of
the mediaeval movement, as will be mentioned by and by.
At one time little was wanting to make Morris follow
his friend Burne Jones's example and leave the pen
for the brush. There is indeed still extant from his
hand an unfinished picture evincing a remarkable
sense of colour. He also for a short time became a
pupil of the late Mr. G. E. Street, the architect, to whose
genius London owes its finest modern Gothic building
— the Law Courts in the Strand. On second thoughts,
however, Morris came to the conclusion that poetry was
his true field of action. His first literary venture was
a monthly periodical started under his auspices in
1856 and called The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine.
It contained, amongst other contributions from Morris's
pen, a prose tale of a highly romantic character, and
was, as regards artistic tendencies, essentially a sequel
of The Germ, the organ of the Pre-Raphaelite Brother-
hood, begun and continued for three numbers only, six
years before. Several of the contributors to the earlier



MEMOIR OF WILLIAM MORRIS. 7

venture, including Rossetti, also supported its offshoot.
Neither, however, gained popular favour, and after a
year's struggling existence The Oxford and Cambridge
Magazine also came to an untimely end. At present
both are eagerly sought for by collectors and fetch
high prices at antiquarian sales. So changeable is
the fate of books.

In 1859 Morris married, after having the year be-
fore brought out his first volume of verse entitled The
Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems. The book fell
dead from the press, and it was not till it was repub-
lished 2 5 years later that the world recognised in it some
of the freshest and most individual efforts of its author,
whose literary position was by that time established
beyond cavil. That position the poet owed in the first
instance to two works published in rapid succession,
The Life and Death of fas on, and The Earthly Paradise,
the latter a collection of tales in verse filling«four stout
volumes. His remaining original works are Love is
enough, a "morality" in the mediaeval sense of the word,
and The Story of Sigurd the Volsung, his longest and,
in the opinion of some, his most perfect epic. In addi-
tion to these should be mentioned the translations
from the old Norse undertaken in conjunction with Mr.
Magnusson the well-known Icelandic scholar, and com-
prising The Story of Grettir the Strong (1869), The
Volsunga Saga, with certain songs from the Elder
Edda (1870), and Three Northern Love Stories (1875);
and finally a metrical rendering of The ^neids of
Virgil.

For a critical discussion or a detailed analysis of
Morris's work this is not the place. It must be suf-
ficient to indicate briefly the ideas which underlie that



8 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM MORRIS.

work and give it its literary cachet. Two main cur-
rents, derivable perhaps from a common source • but
running in different directions can be easily discerned.
The subjects of his tales are almost without exception
derived either from Greek myth or from mediaeval folk-
lore. After all that has been said and written of the
gulf that divides the classic from the romantic feeling
— '■^ Barharen und Hellenen"^ as Heine puts it, such a
conjunction might appear incongruous. But the con-
necting link has here been found in the poet's mind. He
looks upon his classical subject-matter through a me-
diaeval atmosphere, in other words he writes about
Venus and Cupid and Psyche and Medea as a poet of
Chaucer's age might have done, barring of course the
differences of language, although in this respect also it
may be noted that the archaisms of expression affected
by the modern poet appear indifferently in the Greek
and the mediaeval tales. The phenomenon is by no
means unique in literature. Let the reader compare
Chapman's Homer with Pope's, or let him open
Morris's Jason where the bells of Colchis "melo-
diously begin to ring", and the meaning of the afore-
mentioned "mediaeval atmosphere" will at once be
as palpable to him as it was to Keats when, reading
Chapman's rude verse, after Pope's polished stanzas,
he felt

like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken.

It was the romantic chord of Keats's nature, that
chord which vibrates in La belle Dame sans Merci,
which was harmoniously struck and made the great
master of form overlook the formal imperfection of



MEMOIR OF WILLIAM MORRIS. <)

the earlier poet. To the same element such stories
as Jason , or The Love of Alcestis and the Bellerophon
in The Earthly Paradise owe their charm.

Morris's position towards mediaeval subjects did not
at first essentially differ from that of other poets of
similar tendency. In his first volume English and
French knights and damsels figure prominently, and
the beautiful and frail wife of King Arthur is the
heroine of the chief poem and has given her name
to the book. But in the interval which elapsed be-
tween that volume and the Earthly Paradise a con-
siderable change had come over the poet's dream.
By the aid of Mr. Magnusson he had become acquainted
with the treasure of northern folklore hidden in the
Icelandic sagas, the two Eddas, the story of the Volsungs
(of which a masterly translation is due to the two
friends), the Laxdsela saga and other tales of more
or less remote antiquity.

In the Earthly Paradise the double current of the
poet's fancy above alluded to is most strikingly ap-
parent. The ver)'- framework in which the various
tales are set seems to have been designed with that
view. Guided probably by a vague tradition of a
pre-Columbian discovery of America by the Vikings,
the prologue relates how during a terrible pestilence
certain mariners leave their northern home in search
of the land where old age and death are not and
where life is rounded by unbroken pleasure. Sailing
west they come to a fair country. They gaze on
southern sunshine and virgin forest and fertile cham-
paign, but death meets them at every step, and hap-
piness is farthest from their grasp when the people
worship them as gods and sacrifice at their shrine.



10 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM MORRIS.

Escaping from this golden thraldom they regain their
ship, and after many dangers and privations are
driven by the wind to an island inhabited by descen-
dants of the ancient Greeks, who have preserved their
old worship and their old freedom. Here the weary
wanderers of the main are hospitably received, and
here they resolve to dwell in peace, forgetful of their
vain search for the earthly paradise. At the beginning
and the middle of every month the elders of the
people and their guests meet together to while away
the time with song and friendly converse. The
islanders relate the traditions of their Grecian home,
the mariners relate the sagas of the North, and Laur-
ence, a Swabian priest who had joined the Norsemen
in their quest, contributes the legends of Tannhauser
and of the ring given to Venus by the Roman youth.
Here then there is full scope for the quaint beauty of
romantic classicism and for the weird glamour of
northern myth. Without encroaching upon the field of
criticism proper the writer may state that, in his
opinion, amongst the classic tales none is more grace-
ful and finished than "The Golden Apples", and
amongst the northern none more grandly developed
and more epical in the strict sense of the word than
The Lovers of Gudrun based upon the Icelandic Lax-
daela saga. The latter, unfortunately, cannot find a
place in this volume for reasons of space.

Every student of old northern literature is aware
that amongst its remains none are more interesting as
literary monuments, none more characteristic of the
people from which they sprang than the two Eddas
and the Volsunga Saga. Next to the Siege of Troy
and the Arthurian legends perhaps no story or agglo-



MEMOIR OF WILLIAM MORRIS. I 1

meration of stories has left so many and so important
traces in international fiction as the tale of Sigurd
or Siegfried and his race, the heroic god-born Volsungs.
Considering indeed the political insignificance and
remoteness in which that story took its earliest sur-
viving form this enormous success — if the modern term
may be applied — seems at first singularly out of pro-
portion. But it must be remembered that Iceland was
little more than the storehouse of these old traditions
which were the common property of the Teuto-Scan-
dinavian race long before the Norsemen set foot on
the northern isle. Of the two modern versions of the
tale which are most thoroughly inspired by the ancient
myth one, that of Wagner in his tetralogy Der Ring
des Nibelungen^ is dramatic in form, the other, Morris's
The Story of Sigurd the Volsung, bears all the charac-
teristics of the epic. To this difference of artistic
aim, the difference of shape which the tale takes in
the hands of the two poets may be traced. In one
point however they agree. Both Wagner and Morris
go back to the old Icelandic sources in preference to
the mediaeval German version of the tale embodied
in the Nibelungenlied. From this the German poet
borrows little more than the localization of his drama
on the banks of the river Rhine, the English poet
scarcely anything but his metre — the Langzeile or
long-line with six hightoned, and any number of un-
accentuated syllables.

The ordinary modern reader taking up the Vol-
sunga Saga or either of the Eddas without preparation
would probably see in them little more than a confused
accumulation of impossible adventures and deeds of
prowess with an admixture of incest, fratricide and



12 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM MORRIS.

Other horrors. But on looking closer one discovers a
certain plan in this entanglement, a plan much ob-
scured by the unbridled fancy of the old narrators,
and hardly realised by themselves, but which, if pro-
perly sifted, amounts to what we should call a
moral or idea. To "point this moral," to consistently
develop this idea, is the task of the modern poet
courageous enough to grapple with such a subject.
Two ways are open to him. Either he may wholly
abandon the sequence of the old tale, and group its
disjecta membra round a leading idea as a centre, or
else he may adhere to the order and essence of the
legend as originally told, only emphasising such points
as are essential to the significance of the story, and
omitting or throwing into comparative shade those in-
cidents which by their nature betray themselves to be
arbitrary additions of later date. Wagner has chosen
the former way, Morris the latter. This fact, and the
divergent requirements of the drama and the epic,
sufficiently account for their difference of treatment.
The leading idea in both cases remains the same; it is
the fatal curse which attaches to the gold or, which is
the same in a moral sense, to the desire for gold —
auri sacra fames.

At first sight the tale of Sigurd, Fafnir's bane,
seems to have little connection with this idea. It is
briefly this. Sigurd, the son of Sigmund the Volsung,
is brought up at the court of King Elf, the second hus-
band of his mother, after Sigmund has been slain in
battle. With a sword, fashioned from the shards of
his father's weapon, he slays Fafnir, a huge worm
or dragon, and possesses himself of the treasure
watched by the monster, including a ring and the



MEMOIR OF WILLIAM MORRIS. 13

"helm of aweing," the latter in the Nibelungenlied,
converted into the "Tarnkappe", a magic cap which
makes the bearer invisible and endows him with super-
natural strength. Tasting of the blood of the dragon,
he understands the language of birds, and an eagle
tells him of a beautiful maiden lying asleep on a rock
called Hindfell, surrounded by a wall of wavering fire.
Through it Sigurd rides and awakes Brynhild the
sword maiden, or Valkyrie, from her magic slumber.
Love naturally follows. The pair live together on
Hindfell for a season and Brynhild teaches the youth
the runes of her wisdom, a conception of woman's re-
fining and civilising mission frequently met with in old
Germanic tales. When Sigurd leaves her to seek new
adventures they plight the troth of eternal love, and

Then he set the ring on her finger, and once if ne'er again

They kissed and clung together, and their hearts were full and fain.

From Brynhild's rock Sigurd journeys to a realm
"south of the Rhine" where dwell the kingly brothers,
Gunnar, Hogni, and Guttorm, the Niblungs, together
with their sister Gudrun, "the fairest of maidens", and
their mother Grimhild, "a wise wife" and a fierce-
hearted woman, as the Volsunga Saga alternately de-
scribes her. It is through a love-philter brewed by
her that Sigurd forgets the vows exchanged with Bryn-
hild, and becomes enamoured of Gudrun, whom he
soon after weds. So powerful is the charm that the
very name of his former love has been wuped from
Sigurd's memory, and he willingly undertakes the task
to woo and win Brynhild for his brother Gunnar. For
that purpose he, by means of his magic cap, assumes
Gunnar's semblance, and after having once more



14 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM MORRIS.

crossed the wall of wavering flame compels Brynhild
to become his bride. But, faithful to his promise, he
places a drawn sword between himself and the maid
"as they lie on one bed together." On parting from
her he receives back from Brynhild his own ring given
to her at Hind fell in the days of their bliss. Sigurd
then returns to Gunnar and resumes his own form,
and all return home, the King leading his unwilling
bride in triumph.

The subsequent events are the outgrowth of the
tragic guilt thus incurred. Sigurd reveals the secret
of Brynhild's wooing to his wife, and allows her to
take possession of the fatal ring, which she during a
quarrel shows to Gunnar's wife. Brynhild thus in-
formed of the fraud practised on her, thinks of
vengeance, and incites her husband and his brothers
to kill Sigurd. The deed is done while Sigurd lies
asleep in his chamber with Gudrun, or, according to
the more poetic version of the German epic, while he
bends over a brook in the forest to quench his thirst
after a day's hunting. But as soon as her beloved
foe is killed the old passion never quenched rises up
again in Brynhild's heart. To be united with her lover
in jdeath she pierces her breast with a sword, and one
pyre consumes both.

With this climax Wagner very properly concludes
his drama. But the epic poet likes to follow the
course of events to their ultimate consequences, and
Morris, in accordance with the Volsunga Saga, pro-
ceeds to relate how, after many years of mournful
widowhood, Gudrun is married to Atli, a mighty king,
the brother of Brynhild. Eager to become possessed
of Sigurd's treasure he invites the Niblungs, its actual



MEMOIR OF WILLIAM MORRIS. I 5

owners, to his country, and there the kingly brothers
and all their followers are killed by base treachery and
after the most heroic resistance. They refuse sternly
to ransom their lives by a discovery of the hoard
which previous to their departure they have hidden at
the bottom of a lake, and which thus is irrecoverably
lost to mankind. Gudrun has incited her husband to
the deed and has looked on calmly while her kinsmen
were slain one after the other. But when all are dead
and the murder of Sigurd has been revenged, the
feeling of blood relationship so powerful among
Northern nations is reawakened in her. While Atli
and his earls are asleep she sets fire to the kingly hall,
and her wretched husband falls by her own hand. It
is characteristic of the Icelandic epic that after all
these fates and horrors Gudrun lives for a number
of years and is yet again married to a third husband.
But to this length even Morris refuses to accompany
the tale. In accordance with the Volsunga Saga his
Gudrun throws herself into the sea; but the waves do
not carry her "to the burg of king Imakr, a mighty
king and lord of many folk."

All this is very grand and weird, the reader will
say, but where is the moral, the ideal essence of which
these events are but the earthly reflex? To this
essence we gradually ascend by inquiring into the
mythological sources of the tale, by asking who is
Sigurd, whence does he come, on what mission is he
sent and by whom? also what is the significance of
the treasure watched by a dragon and coveted by all
mankind? This treasure we then shall find and the
curse attaching to it ever since it was robbed from
Andvari, the water-elf, is the keynote of the whole



1 6 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM MORRIS.

Story. The curse proves fatal to all its successive
owners from Andvari himself and Fafnir, who, for its
sake, kills his father, down to Sigurd and Brynhild
and the Niblung brothers. Nay, Odin himself, the
supreme God, becomes subject to the curse of the
gold through having once coveted it, and we dimly
discern that the ultimate doom of the Aesir, the Rag-
narok, or dusk of the Gods, of which the Voluspa
speaks, is intimately connected with the same baneful
influence. It further becomes evident that Sigurd the
Volsung, the descendant of Odin, is destined to wrest
the treasure and the power derived from it from the
Niblungs, the dark or cloudy people who threaten the
bright godworld of Valhall with destruction. And
this leads us back to a still earlier stage of the myth
in which Sigurd himself becomes the symbol of the
celestial luminary conquering night and misty dark-
ness, an idea repeatedly hinted at by Morris and
splendidly illustrated by Wagner, when Siegfried ap-
pears on the stage illumined by the first rays of the
rising sun. In the work of the German poet all this
is brought out with a distinctness of which only
dramatic genius of the highest order is capable. With
an astounding grasp of detail and with a continuity
of thought rarely equalled, Wagner has remoulded
the confused and complex argument of the old tale,
omitting what seemed unnecessary, and placing in
juxtaposition incidents organically connected but sepa-
rated by the obtuseness of later sagamen.

Morris, as has been said before, proceeds on a dif-
ferent principle. His first object is to tell a tale, and
to tell it as nearly as possible in the spirit and ac-
cording to the letter of the old Sagas. In this he has



MEMOIR OF WILLIAM MORRIS. I7

succeeded in a manner at once indicative of his high
poetic gifts and of a deep sympathy with the spirit
of the Northern Myth, which breathes in every line
and in every turn of his phraseology. To compare
the peculiar tinge of his language with the ordinary
archaisms and euphonisms of literary poets would be
mistaking a field flower for its counterpart in a
milliner's shop window. It is true that he also hints
at the larger philosophic and moral issues of the tale.
But when he refers to the end of the gods brought
about by their own guilt or to the redeeming mission
of Sigurd, it is done in the mysterious, not to say
half conscious manner of the saga itself, and the effect
is such as from his own point of view he intended it
and could not but intend it to be.

Between the publication of The Defence 0/ Guenevere
and that of Jason ten years elapsed. During most of
this time the poet was employed in artistic pursuits.
In 1 86 1 he started in conjunction with a number of
friends the business of decorator and artistic designer
which still bears his name. Growing from very
modest beginnings this enterprise was destined to
work an entire change in the external aspect of
English homes. It soon extended its activity to every
branch of art-workmanship. D. G. Rossetti, Madox
Brown, and Burne Jones drew cartoons for the stained
glass windows to be seen in many of our churches
and colleges. Morris himself designed wall-papers
and the patterns of carpets. The latter are woven on
hand-looms in his factory at Merton Abbey, which
stands on the banks of the river Wandle surrounded
by orchards, and looks as like a medieval workshop as
the modern dresses of the workgirls will allow. Another

Morris. 2



1 8 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM MORRIS.

member of the firm, Philip Webb, was the first modern
architect to build houses of red brick in the style
vaguely and not quite correctly described as "Queen
Anne." At present these houses count by thousands
in London and a whole village of them has been
built at Turnham Green. The members of the firm
did not confine their attention to any particular style
or age or country. Wherever beautiful things could
be found they collected them and made them popular.
Old china English, and foreign, Japanese fans and
screens, Venetian glass and German pottery were
equally welcome to them and through them to the
public generally. It may be said that the "aesthetic"
fashion as it came to be called will like other fashions
die out, and that people in the course of time will
grow tired of "living up to" their furniture and dresses.
At the same time the idea thus insisted upon that
beauty is an essential and necessary ingredient of
practical modern English life is not likely to be with-
out beneficial and permanent effect.