Compare the idea of E. B. Brown

ing's sonnet XXII (page 474).
XXII. 12. Like the moon's growth etc.:
i.e., like the moon rising until its face
gleams through the radiance which, while
yet hidden, it had sent forth.
XXV.

4. Still: ever, continually.
7-8. yet

unheard:

The

voice of the higher Love, though it speaks to them at every meeting, is often drowned by their sheer delight in possessing each other.

12. brake: thicket. The image is of the winged hour killed by some stroke of fate that keeps the two lovers at a distance from each other.

XXVII. Contrast the title and idea of "The Sea-Limits" (page 566). — Here culminates the conception of Love that appears, more or less, in every one of the preceding sonnets given in the text. Compare the thought of Shelley's "Epipsychidion," lines 112 ff. (page 210).

4. halcyon: Anciently, this word referred to days of fine and calm weather about the winter solstice. See the note to "Epipsychidion," line 412, page 690, above. 7. oracular: mysteriously and di

vinely revealing.

8. The evident heart etc.: the manifested, living centre of all life, future and past. - Two corollaries of this thought are given in the ensuing sestet: life has no problems that Love cannot surmount, and the world has no value when opposed to Love.

(571.) 4. Castalian brink: Castalia was a fountain on Mount Parnassus sacred to the Muses; its waters had the power of inspiring those who drank. - Latmos: the mountain associated with the story of Endymion. Keats's poem is alluded to here and again in line 10.

II-14. Thou whom etc.: When near death, Keats remarked, "I feel the flowers growing over me"; and he suggested for his epitaph, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

THE KING'S TRAGEDY

On the date given in the subtitle, James was murdered in the Dominican or Black Friars' monastery in the town of Perth, which thereupon lost its status as capital of Scotland. He was buried in the Car

4. Bides: endures. Time's weary sea: Cf. "The Sea-Limits," lines 1-3 (page 566); and "The Blessed Damozel,' lines 49-51 (page 558).

called through corruption of the French name of the order) which he himself had founded in 1425, and which Rossetti here merges with the Dominican monastery (line 141, etc.).

(571.) 3. Barlass: "Tradition says that Catherine Douglas, in honor of her heroic act when she barred the door with her arm against the murderers of James the First of Scots, received popularly the name of 'Barlass' (Rossetti). (572.) 28. Henry: King Henry Fourth. 29. southron: southern, i.e., Eng

lish. 41. Song: his poem, "The King's Quair" (quire, i.e., book), in which he tells the story of his love for Lady Jane Beaufort, including this episode of the nightingale.

52. And Love's storm-cloud etc.: The cloud threatening the happiness of Love may be the darkness of Hate (referring to the hate of Graeme and others for the King, as presently shown). — This and the following stanza are important for the whole mood of the poem.

72. the leaguer etc.: the siege of Roxburgh Castle (in 1436). (573.) 105. Three Estates: nobility, clergy, and common people.

131-133. but I see etc.: but I see in thee merely one of God's creatures who is my mortal foe.

WILLIAM MORRIS (1834-1896)

It has been said of Morris's intimate friend Rossetti that, feeling the impulse of the Oxford Movement, he translated its religion into poetry. In the case of William Morris, there is an even closer association with that movement, in his life if not in his poetry. Coming to Oxford a decade after the deep fires of the Anglican religious revival had begun to cool, he nevertheless cherished the idea, early in his college career, of founding a monastery, and continued for some time to look to the Church for his profession. It was not the medievalism of Newman, however, that was to shape his life, but that of Carlyle and Ruskin (mainly in their social criticism) and of Rossetti (in his conception of art). For a time he studied architecture, and then, submitting completely to the influence of Rossetti, he turned to painting. Subsequently he abandoned that art likewise, in favor of the designing and manufacture of house furnishings.

Morris began to write poetry while in college, and in 1858 published his first volume, The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems, in which the influence of Rossetti was marked. As an Arthurian poet, he already showed himself to be,

what the author of Idylls of the King was not, genuinely medieval in tone. Nine years later came The Life and Death of Jason, quickly followed by a great collection of tales in verse, The Earthly Paradise, amounting to 42,000 lines, a work which established his reputation as a major poet. But stronger in spirit is his crowning narrative poem, "Sigurd the Volsung" (1877). What most obviously unifies these and Morris's other poetic works is their reincarnation of the past. Facilelyrather too facilely he versified mythology, legends, hero-tales, from the Greek to the Scandinavian, aiming at no "criticism of life," regarding himself, modestly, as "an idle singer of an empty day," a modern bard retelling old tales for those who cared to listen. In this general respect, he recalls Sir Walter Scott (see the biography of Scott, page 672, above). But his end-of-the century outlook is far from Scott's simple adventurous feudalism.

Having superabundant energies and much of the humanitarian and reforming idealism of the time, he preached after Carlyle the gospel of work and after Ruskin the gospel of pleasure in work; and carried his faith into his factory for household furnishings. With the development of the industrial revolution, satisfaction in work, in the making of serviceable and beautiful things, largely deserted the life of the "working classes." This pleasure had existed in the past, emphatically in the thirteenth century. To revive the essentials of that early industrial order was the task that Morris kept before him, and that ultimately determined his adoption of socialistic views (see, for example, his prose romance, News from Nowhere, 1891, which pictures a communistic Utopia). The real basis of his socialism was æsthetic: life was needlessly and increasingly ugly, he felt - beauty must return to us, in all the things that are made for use, no less than in poems and pictures; striving for beauty, we shall attain happiness.

WINTER WEATHER

(584.) 57. the following bell: i.e., the twelve strokes following the "chimes" (line 51).

As he turned in the preceding poem from "the unchanging sea," so here the poet can find no comfort in the still moonlight of November, "the changeless seal [i.e. conclusion] of change." For though irked by the changefulness of life, and allured by the idea of rest, he shrinks from the stillness of "dread eternity."-Contrast such poems as Christina Rossetti's "A Soul" (page 555) and "Rest" (page 554).

7. these four walls: i.e., his study. The poet is addressing himself after a long day's work.

20. void patience: The patience of eternity seems empty or meaningless to his "restless heart" (line 21). — In the preceding poem, the patience required by earthly life seemed irksome (line 16).

THE GOLDEN APPLES

This tale is perhaps not so well known as others in The Earthly Paradise. It lacks the plot-interest of "Atalanta's Race"; the force of "The Lovers of Gudrun"; the weird lure that catches the reader in many of the stories; and, above all, the theme of love and death which chiefly fascinated Morris himself. In his handling of that great theme, however, Morris suffers from comparison with profounder poets; whereas his treatment of the episode of Hercules and the Golden Apples is finely distinctive. Here, his cheery delight in life too often submerged has freshest play; and the flowing, decorative charm of his style, elsewhere cramped by plot-necessities, is given right wind and weather by the fluent and picturesque old sea-god, Nereus.

(589.) 45. Fate -- fire: In agony from the clinging shirt poisoned with Nessus' blood, he caused himself to be consumed with fire.

(590.) 100. the sweet singer: Arion. When he jumped into the sea, to escape murder at the hands of sailors, he was borne to

land by dolphins that had gathered around the ship to hear his music.

(591.) 102-109. How in the mid sea etc.: When abducted by pirates, Bacchus (Dionysus) drove them into madness by performing forest-wonders, one of which was a growth of ivy about the ship.

110-112. how, wild and white etc.: When the race of man became degenerate, Zeus destroyed it with a nine days' flood.

115. Prometheus' son: Deucalion. He and his wife Pyrrha were saved from the flood in a boat built by him, which finally came to rest on Mount Par

nassus.

180. what that evil drew: what brought that misfortune. (593.) 225. fellows:

friends. Observe the purpose of the shift, here, in narrative standpoint.

(595.) 305. daughters of old Hesperus: hence called "Hesperides." Another account makes these nymphs the offspring, not of Hesperus (the evening star), but of Atlas (the mountain in northwest Africa), and places their garden at his foot. Hera (Juno) appointed them guardians, together with the dragon Ladon, of the golden apples which Earth gave her at her marriage with Zeus (Jupiter). The story rose from the paradisiac yearning that belongs to the human heart everywhere, and that created, indeed, Morris's "Earthly Paradise." The garden of the Hesperides, the Greco-Roman Eden, echoed with the sweet and happy singing of the maidens (cf. lines 309-310, etc.).

346. the straw flare out: i.e., a fire in the dry grass. (596.) 364. his gold fell: See lines 32-34. 372-378. But this I know etc.: Contrast the mood of the two preceding poems. This stanza expresses the firmest faith that Morris himself attained to. It entered into his socialism and his view of poetry. While studying the Icelandic mythology in preparation for "Sigurd the Volsung" and other works, he said: "Think of the joy we have in praising great men, and how we turn their stories over and over, and fashion their lives for our joy: and this also we ourselves may give to the world. This seems to me pretty much the religion of the Northmen. I think one

could be a happy man if one could hold it, in spite of the wild dreams and dreadful imaginings that hung about it here and there" (see J. W. Mackail's Life of William Morris).

-- more

(596.) 396-397. Ah! craving fair: Even if their cold nature had been warmed, at this opportunity, by a yearning for human kindness, etc., such yearning could hardly have increased their great beauty.

(597.) 444. a greater sire: Zeus. His mother was Alcmena, wife of King Amphitryon of Thebes.

451. Eurystheus: Cf. lines 3-4. Hercules was "fated" at birth, through an oath obtained from Zeus by a stratagem of jealous Hera, to be the "thrall" of King Eurystheus; and it was at this king's bidding that he performed the famous twelve labors, one of which was fetching the golden apples.

(598.) 466. women fair: The fifty seanymphs called Nereides (Nereids) were daughters and companions of Nereus.

477. Nereus: Like Proteus, he would give true information and aid to anyone who could seize and hold him in spite of his shifting forms. For his timidity, see also line 253 ff. The Mediterranean was his realm: Morris finely associates him with its weathers, and its lore (see line 99 ff), while making him primarily a very human old man. 481. shifting

ing waves.

dale: the roll

THE VOICE OF TOIL

13-16. Where fast and faster etc.: Cf. the last stanza of the "Apology" and opening lines of the "Prologue" of The Earthly Paradise (page 587).

GEORGE MEREDITH (1828-1909)

Of Welsh descent, Meredith was born at Portsmouth and educated in Germany. Having lost the small means that he inherited, he struggled for a time in the law, and for some years as a journalist. His first printed work was a poem, his first volume Poems (1851), and he continued to write poetry for sixty years. In prose fiction, his first work was an Oriental fantasy, The Shaving of Shagpat (1856); and his first decisive success a significant novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859). His novels as a whole form a brilliant social comedy, centering in The Egoist (1879). Behind that comedy, and behind Meredith's copious wit in his circle of friends, there went on a train of solitary meditation that found expression in his

verse.

The 1851 volume of poems, containing "Love in the Valley" (page 601), was followed, after an interval of eleven years, by Modern Love, a sequence of sonnet-like poems (one of which is given on page 608); and then from time to time came other volumes, including Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth, Ballads and Poems of Tragic Life, A Reading of Earth, A Reading of Life. These titles themselves indicate broadly the texture of his poetry, which is critical and philosophic in the warp, but keenly joyous in the woof. He is a poet of nature, giving us intimately the rolling, wooded landscapes of the South of England where he spent nearly the whole of his life, as Wordsworth gave us the hills and lakes of the North-but interpreting the external world with a mind saturated with social and evolutionary ideas, as Wordsworth had not done. It is a rather grim, hard-won "Joy" that he finds and conveys to us by his faith in "brain," the highest phase of the evolutionary process. In his reading of Earth, there