William Morris: A Critical Study

by John Drinkwater

From township to township, o'er down and by village,

and now they stand in the twilight, looking down the white road before them, where

The straw from the ox-yard is blowing about;
The moon's rim is rising, a star glitters o'er us,
And the vane on the spire-top is swinging in doubt.

They are in the full content of their love and the sweetness of the earth, and then—

Hark, the wind in the elm-boughs! from London it bloweth,
And telleth of gold, of hope and unrest:
Of power that helps not; of wisdom that knoweth,
But teacheth not aught of the worst and the best.

The contrast is thus imagined, and leads the poet into a direct statement of his understanding of the whole problem. He never flattered the people for whom he was working into the belief that the great unleavened majority had the wisdom of the world on its side. His rejection of that idea was as emphatic as Ibsen's. What he sought was to make them realize the fact themselves. He did not tell them that they were fitted for the great simple joys of life, but that they had the right to be so fitted, and that it was in themselves alone to assert that right. His aim was to make them discontented with themselves and the ugliness of their own lives, knowing that once this was done the rest would inevitably follow. And he realized, on the other hand, that the life which he worshipped was made impossible and all its virtue destroyed simply by the surroundings that by some obscure process of evil had established themselves on earth. The happiness of the speaker and his lover in this fresh beauty of the spring twilight was the outcome not of any inherent virtue of their own, but of the mere chance of their escape from this disease of circumstance.

Hark! the March wind again of a people is telling:
Of the life that they live there, so haggard and grim,
That if we and our love amidst them had been dwelling
My fondness had faltered, thy beauty grown dim.

The poem takes up, with exquisite tenderness, the hope that these people over whom the March wind has passed will yet awaken from their sleep of degradation, and turns back again to the quiet peace of the village inn with the 'lights and the fire,'

And the fiddler's old tune and the shuffling of feet;
For there in a while shall be rest and desire,
And there shall the morrow's uprising be sweet.

The whole poem is one more witness to the sovereignty of art. The deepest social difficulty of our time is here drawn through the meshes of the artist's imagination and, purged of everything inessential, set out in vibrating colour and line far more appealing and convincing than all the statistical statements of the lords of rule. The failure of our modern legislation to realize the value of art in any hope of national regeneration is not the least of its blunders. Artists have, happily, escaped from the patronage of courts, but until the propagandists rediscover the fact that they must bring back the artists to their help, not as servants but as fellow labourers, they will not work wisely. The artists continue their labour, building some beauty in the world. That labour can be directed by no one but themselves, but it is at their peril that the workers who are striving, earnestly enough, towards a better hope refuse to throw the creations of the artist into the balance with their own endeavour. To bring poetry to the issue of a definite social problem, is, unfortunately, thought of as mere idleness. But let 'The Message of the March Wind' be delivered to the people up and down the land, as systematically if need be as the demand for rent or taxes, and it will be heard willingly enough, and when it is heard there will be new life among us. I speak in metaphors, but there may be method even in a metaphor. For 'The Message of the March Wind' might bring people in turn to The Earthly Paradise, and then the aim of Morris's art—of all art—would be understood by the world.