KELMSGOTT HOUSE 



along with it men and women, struggling still, though battered and 

 well-nigh spent ; a torrent that, in its wild onward rush to the 

 misty ocean of futurity, may sometimes, it is true, wash them into 

 a safe and gentle backwater but oftener dashes them against the 

 rocks to an untoward fate. His conception of life, as shown in 

 " The Earthly Paradise " at all events, is rather that of a placid 

 stream, flowing smoothly between flowery banks, and watering 

 some lotus-eating land in which it seems always afternoon. 

 Chaucer to whom physically as well as mentally he was said to 

 bear a resemblance was professedly Morris's model for the age 

 of Chaucer was to him the Golden Age but though after Chaucer 

 he is the greatest of story-tellers, his poetic genius has more affinity 

 with that of Keats, whom he called " one of his masters," and 

 admired more than any modern poet. He is always musical and 

 often dreamy ; the lovely lines that end " The Earthly Paradise " 

 - adopted for the front cover of this book, because they so exactly 

 explain its purpose, are typical of Morris at his best, though he has 

 written many others of which the sentiment is as true, and the 

 language as choice. Nevertheless, his sweetest stanzas have not 

 the haunting melody, the rich suggest! veness, to be found in such 

 lines of Keats as those beginning : 



' Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird ! " 



Nor so far as I know, from a reading that has been necessarily 

 limited, is there anything in the whole range of Morris's poetry 

 which has the splendid imagery, the languorous beauty of diction, 

 and at the same time the fervour, the depth, and the suppressed 

 passion, of that dream within a dream, " The Eve of St. Agnes," 



when : 



" ages long ago 



These lovers fled away into the storm." 



It is much to Morris's credit that his meaning is always clear ; 

 and that if in his verse there are no passages that, owing to their 

 incisiveness, wisdom, and originality, have passed into proverbs, 

 becoming " familiar in our mouths as household words "neither, 

 on the other hand, are there any worrying obscurities, such as we 

 encounter in Browning. He makes, it is true, no heavy demands 

 on the intellect, or the emotions, and though I cannot see that it is 

 necessarily the province of poetry to do the former it should 



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