L ONG ere Columbus in the breeze unfurled His venturous sail to hunt the setting sun, Long ere he fired his first exultant gun Where strange canoes all round his flagship whirled, The unsailed ocean which the west wind curled Had born strange waifs to Europe, one by one: Wood carved by Indian hands, and trees like none Which men then knew, from an untrodden world. Oh for a waif from o'er that wider sea Whose margin is the grave, and where we think A gem-bepebbled continent may be! But all in vain we watch upon the brink; I WROUGHT them like a targe of hammered gold On which all Troy is battling round and round; Or Circe's cup, embossed with snakes that wound Through buds and myrtles, fold on scaly fold; Or like gold coins, which Lydian tombs may hold, I know not in what metal I have wrought; But if it is of gold it will not rust; And when the time is ripe it will be brought Into the sun, and glitter through its dust. ITH A Dream, -- one might almost WITH say strangely symbolizing "The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples" of this entire series of medieval romances, - we come to an end of William Morris's contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine for 1856. As authoritatively set forth by Mr. Mackail these consisted "of eight prose tales, five poems, an article on Amiens Cathedral and another on two engravings by Alfred Rethel,2 and a review of Browning's recently published 'Men and Women. The article last named is, I believe, the single instance in which Morris ever voluntarily took the rôle of a reviewer; and together with an article on Rossetti's volume of poems of 1870, which, much against his will, he wrote for the 1 See The Life of William Morris, By J. W. Mackail. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1899; in particular Vol. 1, pp. 91-99. 2 This short description of Rethel's engravings is given in "Reprints from the Bibelot," (IX) but not in The Bibelot itself. formal contributions to literary criticism.”3 From time to time suitable forewords have been prefixed to each tale, essay or poem as given in The Bibelot so that now little remains save to take leave of what has been rightly compared "in quality to Keats's 'Endymion:' as rich in imagination, as irregularly gorgeous in language, as full in every vein and fibre of the sweet juices and ferment of the spring." One tale, "Frank's Sealed Letter," remains by us undisturbed. It is "the only one which bears internal traces of labour or effort, . . . in which for once, and with very faint success, he tried to write a story of modern life. In common with the unfinished and unpublished modern novel which he wrote many years afterwards, it gives the curious impression of some one writing about a kind of life which he only knows from books, with a strange sort of inverted antiquarianism," sound criticism that we do well to accept as final. From this abortive story Morris rescued the lovely 3 With this statement before us we may safely exclude the tale entitled "The Two Partings" and the essay on "Ruskin and the Quarterly" ascribed to Morris by Mr. Forman. See The Books of William Morris, pp. 29, 30. lyric "In Prison" when, two years later, be published The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems: the story itself can serve no valid literary end by disinterring. "But in five other tales," excluding The Story of the Unknown Church and Lindenborg Pool, "the flower of Morris's early work," as Mr. Mackail declares, "the world is one of pure romance," — stories which, as he goes on to say, "have never been reprinted." Yet even before these words went to press in London, (March, 1899), The Hollow Land and Gertha's Lovers had appeared in our pages- an exquisite romance-cycle of lost ladies of old years and knights whose swords are rust that is bere brought to its triumphant close. "And now is all that ancient story told FOR AUGUST: IN PRAISE OF OLD HOUSES VERNON LEE. |