William Morris: A Critical Study

by John Drinkwater

This passage is a typical example of Morris's manner. It shows the occasional hastiness of composition that is found at intervals throughout his work; 'door' and 'board' in the second and fourth lines strike unpleasingly on the ear that is carrying the rhyme 'floor—poor.' But it also shows the individuality with which Morris handles at all times a well-tried measure; it shows, too, the ease with which he conveys a certain atmospheric significance apart from his actual statement, and, finally, it shows his exquisite sense of word-values and his extraordinary power of visualization. No poet has given more beautiful expression to the sensuous delight of the eye than Morris, and even here, where the mood is one of profound sorrow, the thing seen is described with a sweetness and naturalness that makes it bearable; indeed, more than bearable, something that we gladly remember. In this matter Morris, as we should expect, worked always in the greatest tradition of art; his most terrible and tragic moments are never moments that we wish to forget.

In a paper called Churches of Northern France that Morris contributed to "The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine," he talks about Amiens Cathedral. He imagines it first as it would look from one of the steeples of the town. 'It rises up from the ground, grey from the paving of the street, the cavernous porches of the west front opening wide, and marvellous with the shadows of the carving you can only guess at; and above stand the kings, and above that you would see the twined mystery of the great flamboyant rose window with its thousand openings, and the shadows of the flower-work carved round it; then the grey towers and gable, grey against the blue of the August sky; and behind them all, rising high into the quivering air, the tall spire over the crossing.' And then again, as you approach, 'the great apse rises over you with its belt of eastern chapel; first the long slim windows of these chapels, which are each of them little apses, the Lady Chapel projecting a good way beyond the rest; and then, running under the cornice of the chapels and outer aisles all round the church, a cornice of great noble leaves; then the parapets in changing flamboyant patterns; then the conical roofs of the chapels hiding the exterior tracery of the triforium; then the great clerestory windows, very long, of four lights, and stilted, the tracery beginning a long way below the springing of their arches. And the buttresses are so thick, and their arms spread so here, that each of the clerestory windows looks down its own space between them as if between walls. Above the windows rise their canopies running through the parapet; and above all the great mountainous roof, and all below it and around the windows and walls of the choir and apse stands the mighty army of the buttresses, holding up the weight of the stone roof within with their strong arms for ever.' Then, having set down the cumulative effect of the great Gothic structure in these few strokes, he goes on to examine the beauties of its detail, the carving on the screens and doors, the figures on the tombs, the mouldings and little stories in stone, all of them the vital expressions of the joy of some nameless craftsman in his work. Apart from the side light that these descriptions throw on Morris's view of art, we are reminded as we read them of the architectural design of The Earthly Paradise. It has precisely the qualities of a Gothic cathedral. The whole scheme of the poem, which contrives the alternate narration of stories drawn from classic and romantic sources, carrying the process along the months of the year and setting the whole in a purely lyrical framework, results in a massive general effect which must be once seen before we can wholly realize the beauty of the stories by themselves. But once seen it is never forgotten, and afterwards we are content to return again and again to the detail, as certain of finding satisfaction in any of the single stories on which we may chance as we are in the tracery of the cloisters or the devices on the stalls of a Gothic church. It is, of course, the peculiar glory of Gothic—or romantic—art, that while the parts combine to make a whole more wonderful than themselves, they yet have an independent beauty and completeness of their own. Morris in writing his tales was careful never to sacrifice his general outline for the sake of momentary effects, but each story is complete in itself and separable from the rest.

Although it is to be accounted as a virtue to Morris that he never sought to decorate his verse with jewels that should distract attention from the whole texture, it must always be remembered that he was absolved from the necessity of doing this because the texture itself was of extraordinary richness and shot with a hundred colours. The first and most obvious danger in a long narrative poem is that many passages which are concerned with the mere statement of fact necessary to the progress of the story will not be poetry at all. But moving always, as it were, in the open country of the world, away from everything that is not intimately related to that simplicity of life that has been discussed, Morris is never forced to conduct his people over moments that are fundamentally incapable of poetic treatment. Their most commonplace actions are still carried through with the vividness that comes of a constant joy in labour and direct contact with the earth. A journey means the building of a boat and shaping of oars, and a loaf of bread is the direct witness of corn harvested and ground, and wood gathered for the fire. An instance may be taken almost at random: Jason and his warriors find that their progress is stopped, and that their ship must be borne across the land. It is just such a moment as might, in the hands of a poet who was only anxious to get the matter done to comply with the necessities of his narrative, sink from poetry altogether. This is how Morris manages it:—

And there all,
Half deafened by the noises of the fall
And bickering rapids, left the ashen oar,
And spreading over the well-wooded shore
Cut rollers, laying on full many a stroke,
And made a capstan of a mighty oak,
And so drew Argo up, with hale and how,
On to the grass, turned half to mire now.
Thence did they toil their best, in drawing her
Beyond the falls, whereto being come anear,
They trembled when they saw them; for from sight
The rocks were hidden by the spray-clouds white,
Cold, wretched, chilling, and the mighty sound
Their heavy-laden hearts did sore confound;
For parted from all men they seemed, and far
From all the world, shut out by that great bar.
Moreover, when with toil and pain, at last
Unto the torrent's head they now had passed,
They sent forth swift Ætalides to see
What farther up the river there might be.
Who, going twenty leagues, another fall
Found, with great cliffs on each side, like a wall;
But 'twixt the two, another unbarred stream
Joined the main river; therefore did they deem,
When this they heard, that they perforce must try
This smoother branch; so somewhat heavily
Argo they launched again, and got them forth
Still onward toward the winter and the north.

This is writing on a level below which Morris never falls, and it is yet on the side of poetry. It is possible for the artist's temperament to throw beauty on to an object in itself unlovely, and the result is often some confusion of mind as to the real source of the beauty. Mr. Brangwyn can draw men stripped to the waist toiling in the inferno of a black-country iron-works, and his creation is beautiful. Emile Verhaeren can strike a song out of the utter degradation of humanity: but the essential poetry in each case is in the soul of the artist and not in the subject of his contemplation. If our knowledge of the ironworks rested wholly on Mr. Brangwyn's report we might well believe that it really was strangely and strongly beautiful. But if we really know the iron works itself, we know that it is hideously ugly, using men half as beasts, half as machines, choking the air and wounding the earth, a thing definitely unpoetic because definitely a denial of life. Morris worked in quite another manner. Instead of lending ugliness the undeserved beauty and colour of his own temperament, he stripped all things that came into his vision of all that was inessential, all the excrescences of accident and will, and then allowed them in their renewed simplicity to find natural and direct expression. The result is that although it may be true to say that Morris has fewer single lines which are memorable if detached from their context than any other poet at all comparable to him in achievement, it is equally true to say that he stands alone in the creation of a great body of work that moves consistently and surely on the plane of poetry from first to last with scarcely a single lapse. No poet has ever had a more infallible instinct as to what was and what was not of the stuff of poetry.

With Jason and The Earthly Paradise, Morris establishes his claim to greatness. The height of his power is not yet reached, but here already we have a breadth of design, an intensity of perception, and a sureness of utterance about which there can be no question. Not only does he prove himself to be a narrative poet of the first rank, but in the songs and interludes he attains a sweetness and tenderness which if not matchless are certainly not surpassed. Things like—

I know a little garden close
Set thick with lily and red rose,—

and

Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing—

and