These works are the kind that show the influence of Old Norse literature as spiritual rather than substantial. The stories are not drawn from the older literature, nor are the settings patterned after it; but the impulses that swayed men and women in the sagaman's tale, and the motives that uplifted them, are found here. We cannot think that the English people will always be unmindful of the great debt that they owe to the Muse of the North.
7.
In 1891, Morris engaged in a literary enterprise that set the fashion for similar enterprises in succeeding years. With Eirikr Magnusson he undertook the making of The Saga Library, "addressed to the whole reading public, and not only to students of Scandinavian history, folk-lore and language." [[33]] With Bernard Quaritch's imprint on the title pages, these volumes to the number of five were issued in exceptional type and form. The munificence of the publisher was equalled by the skill of the translators, and in their versions of "Howard, the Halt," "The Banded Men," and "Hen Thorir" (in Vol. I, dated 1891), "The Ere-Dwellers" (in Vol. II, dated 1892) and Heimskringla (in Vols. III, IV and V, dated 1893-4-5), the definitive translations of sterling sagas were given. As was the case with their Grettis Saga, the works rise to the dignity of masterpieces, and had we no other legacy from Morris' wealth of Icelandic scholarship, these translations were precious enough to keep us grateful through many generations.
8.
One more contribution to English literature hailing from the North, and we have done with William Morris's splendid gifts. The volume of 1891, entitled Poems by the Way, contains several pieces that must be reckoned with. The vividest recollections of Icelandic materials here made use of are the poems "Iceland First Seen," and "To the Muses of the North." No reader of the poet's biography can forget the remarkable journey that Morris made through Iceland, nor how he prepared for that journey with all the care and love of a pilgrim bound for a shrine of his deepest devotion. Every foot of ground was visited that had been hallowed by the noble souls and inspiring deeds of the past, and that pilgrimage warmed him to loving literary creation through the remainder of his life. The last two stanzas of the first of the poems just mentioned show what a strong hold the forsaken island had upon his affections, and go far to explain the success of his Icelandic work:
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 conies 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?
In several other poems in this volume he recurs to the practice of his romances, Scandinavianizes where the tendency of other poets would be to mediævalize. "Of the Wooing of Hallbiorn the Strong," and "The Raven and the King's Daughter" are examples. Here we have ballads like those that Coleridge and Keats conceived on occasion, full of the beauty that lends itself so kindly to painted-glass decoration; clustered spear-shafts, crested helms and curling banners, and everywhere lily hands combing yellow hair or broidering silken standards. But the names strike a strange note in these songs of Morris, and the accompaniments are very different from the mediæval kind: