Poems [8]
each its unutterable joys. Alas! we can never remain long in this happy dream-land. Nevertheless, we have profited greatly by the journey. The cowslips and violets gathered by us in childhood, shall be potent in the hour of temptation; and the cap of rushes woven for us by kind hands in days gone by, shall be a surer defence than a helmet of steel in the hour of battle. No, no; we will never disgrace our antecedents.
"There is one quality in his songs to which we can not but direct attention--and this is their almost feminine purity. The propensities have had their laureates; and genius, alas! has often defiled its angel wings by contact with the sensual and the impure; but Morris has never attempted to robe vice in beauty; and as has been well remarked, his lays can bring to the cheek of purity no blush save that of pleasure."
The following letter, from the pen of Grace Greenwood, is a lady's tribute to the genius of the poet:--
"I have read of late, with renewed pleasure and higher appreciation, the songs and ballads of our genial-hearted countryman, Morris. I had previously worried myself by a course of rather dry reading, and his poetry, tender, musical, fresh, and natural, came to me like spring's first sunshine, the song of her first birds, the breath of her first violets.
"What a contrast is this pleasant volume to the soul-racking "Festus," which has been one of my recent passions. That remarkable work has passages of great beauty and power, linked in unnatural marriage with much that is poor and weak. It is like a stately ruined palace,
'Mingling its marble with the dust of Rome;'
or it is like its own fabled first temple built to God, in the new earth--a multitude of gems, swallowed by an earthquake, and scattered through a world of baser matter. The soul of the reader now faints with excess of beauty, now shudders at the terrible and the revolting. the young poet's muse at times goes like Proserpine to gather flowers, but straightway is seized by the lord of the infernal regions, and disappears in flame and darkness. The entire volume is a poetical Archipelago--isles of loveliness sprinkling a dead sea of unprofitable matter.
"It were absurd to compare the light and graceful poems of Morris with the work "Festus"--a simple Grecian arch with a stupendous Turkish mosque--an Etruscan vase with a Gothic tower. Yet there are doubtless many who will prefer the perfect realization of modest aspirations, to grand, but ineffectual graspings after glory's highest and most divine guerdons--a quiet walk with truth and nature, to an Icarus flight of magnificent absurdities.
"It has been said that the author of 'Long time ago' has rung too many changes on the sentiment and passion of LOVE. Love, the inspiration of the glorious bards of old,
'Who play upon the heart as on a harp, And make our eyes bright as we speak of them;'
'love ever-new, everlasting, fresh, and beautiful, now as when the silence of young Eden was thrilled, but scarce broken, by the voice of the first lover--a joy and a source of joy for ever.'
"I know it is much the fashion now-a-days, to hold in lordly contempt many of those sweet and holy influences which are--
'As angel hands, enclosing ours, Leading us back to Paradisean bowers.'
"Love and liberty are fast becoming mere abstractions to the enlightened apprehension of some modern wise men. It is sad to see how soon those white-winged visitors soil their plumage and change their very nature by a mere descent into the philosophic atmosphere of such mind. One is reminded of the words of Swedenborg--'I saw a great truth let down from heaven into hell, and it THERE BECAME A LIE.'
"This cynical objection to the lays of our minstrel, surely never could have emanated from the heart of WOMAN. SHE is ever loyal to love--that tender and yearning principle in the bosom of the Father, from which and by which the feminine nature was created.
"The poems of Morris are indeed like those flowers of old, born of the blood-drops which oozed from the
"There is one quality in his songs to which we can not but direct attention--and this is their almost feminine purity. The propensities have had their laureates; and genius, alas! has often defiled its angel wings by contact with the sensual and the impure; but Morris has never attempted to robe vice in beauty; and as has been well remarked, his lays can bring to the cheek of purity no blush save that of pleasure."
The following letter, from the pen of Grace Greenwood, is a lady's tribute to the genius of the poet:--
"I have read of late, with renewed pleasure and higher appreciation, the songs and ballads of our genial-hearted countryman, Morris. I had previously worried myself by a course of rather dry reading, and his poetry, tender, musical, fresh, and natural, came to me like spring's first sunshine, the song of her first birds, the breath of her first violets.
"What a contrast is this pleasant volume to the soul-racking "Festus," which has been one of my recent passions. That remarkable work has passages of great beauty and power, linked in unnatural marriage with much that is poor and weak. It is like a stately ruined palace,
'Mingling its marble with the dust of Rome;'
or it is like its own fabled first temple built to God, in the new earth--a multitude of gems, swallowed by an earthquake, and scattered through a world of baser matter. The soul of the reader now faints with excess of beauty, now shudders at the terrible and the revolting. the young poet's muse at times goes like Proserpine to gather flowers, but straightway is seized by the lord of the infernal regions, and disappears in flame and darkness. The entire volume is a poetical Archipelago--isles of loveliness sprinkling a dead sea of unprofitable matter.
"It were absurd to compare the light and graceful poems of Morris with the work "Festus"--a simple Grecian arch with a stupendous Turkish mosque--an Etruscan vase with a Gothic tower. Yet there are doubtless many who will prefer the perfect realization of modest aspirations, to grand, but ineffectual graspings after glory's highest and most divine guerdons--a quiet walk with truth and nature, to an Icarus flight of magnificent absurdities.
"It has been said that the author of 'Long time ago' has rung too many changes on the sentiment and passion of LOVE. Love, the inspiration of the glorious bards of old,
'Who play upon the heart as on a harp, And make our eyes bright as we speak of them;'
'love ever-new, everlasting, fresh, and beautiful, now as when the silence of young Eden was thrilled, but scarce broken, by the voice of the first lover--a joy and a source of joy for ever.'
"I know it is much the fashion now-a-days, to hold in lordly contempt many of those sweet and holy influences which are--
'As angel hands, enclosing ours, Leading us back to Paradisean bowers.'
"Love and liberty are fast becoming mere abstractions to the enlightened apprehension of some modern wise men. It is sad to see how soon those white-winged visitors soil their plumage and change their very nature by a mere descent into the philosophic atmosphere of such mind. One is reminded of the words of Swedenborg--'I saw a great truth let down from heaven into hell, and it THERE BECAME A LIE.'
"This cynical objection to the lays of our minstrel, surely never could have emanated from the heart of WOMAN. SHE is ever loyal to love--that tender and yearning principle in the bosom of the Father, from which and by which the feminine nature was created.
"The poems of Morris are indeed like those flowers of old, born of the blood-drops which oozed from the