events, not from an All this was a little disconcerting. We read "Jason," and read it with pleasure, but without much of the more essential pleasure which comes from magic and distinction of style. The peculiar qualities of Keats, and Tenny. son, and Virgil are not among the gifts of Mr. Morris. As people say of Scott in his long poems, so it may be said of Mr. Morris-that he does not furnish many quotations, does not glitter in "jewels five words long." historical and the dream "rounded by a sleep." The lesson drawn is to make life as full and as beautiful as may be, by love, and adventure, and art. The hideousness of modern industrialism was oppressing Mr. Morris; that hideousness he was doing his best to relieve and redeem, by poetry, and by all the many arts and crafts in which he is a master. His narrative poems are, indeed, part of his industry in this field. He was not born to slay monsters, he says, "the idle singer of an empty day." Later he has set about slaying monsters, like Jason, or, unlike Jason, scattering dragon's teeth to raise forces which he cannot lay, and cannot direct. I shall go no further into politics or agitation, and I say this much only to prove that Mr. Morris's "criticism of life," and prolonged, wistful dwelling on the thought of death, ceased to satisfy himself. His own later part, as a poet and an ally of Socialism, proves this to be true. It seems to follow that the peculiarly level, lifeless, decorative effect of his narratives, which remind us rather of glorious tapestries than of pictures, is no longer wholly satisfactory to himself. There is plenty of charmed and delightful reading-"Jason" and the "Earthly Paradise" are literature for "The Castle of Indolence," but we do miss a strenuous rendering of action and passion. In "Jason" he entered on his long career as a narrator; a poet retelling the immortal primeval stories of the human race. In one guise or another the legend of Jason is the most widely distributed of romances; the North American Indians have it, and the Samoans and the Samoyeds, as well as all IndoEuropean peoples. This tale, told briefly by Pindar, and at greater length by Apollonius Rhodius, and in the "Orphica," Mr. Morris took up and handled in a simple objective way. His art was always pictorial, but, in "Jason" and later, he described more, and was less apt, as it were, to flash a picture on the reader, in some incommunicable way. In the covers of the First Edition were advertisements of the "Earthly Paradise;" that vast collection of the world's old tales retold. One might almost conjecture that "Jason" had originally been intended for a part of the "Earthly Paradise," and had outgrown its limits. The tone is much the same, though the "criticism of life" is less formally and explicitly stated. For Mr. Morris came at last to a "criticism of life." It would not have satisfied Mr. Matthew Arnold, and it did not satisfy Mr. Morris! The burden of these long narrative poems is vanitas vanitatum; the fleeting, perishable, unsatisfying nature of human existence, These Mr. Morris had rendered in "The Defence of Guinevere;” now he gave us something different, something beautiful, but something deficient in dramatic vigor. Apollonius Rhodius is, no doubt, much of a pedant, a literary writer of epic, in an age of criticism. He dealt with the tale of "Jason," and conceivably he may have borrowed from older minstrels. But the Medea of Apollonius Rhodius, in her love, her tenderness, her regret for home, in all her maiden words and ways, is undeniably a character more living, more human, more passionate, and more sympathetic, than the Medea of Mr. Morris. I could almost wish that he had closely followed that classical original, the first true love story in literature. In the same way I prefer Apollonius's spell for soothing the dragon, as much terserand more to seek the Earthly Paradise, and the somniferous than the spell put by Mr. land where Death never comes. Much Morris into the lips of Medea. Scholars more dramatic, I venture to think, than will find it pleasant to compare these any passage of "Jason," is that where passages of the Alexandrine and of the the dreamy seekers of dreamland, London poets. As a brick out of the Breton and Northman, encounter the vast palace of "Jason" we may select stout King Edward III., whose kingthe song of the Nereid to Hylas-Mr. dom is of this world. Action and Morris is always happy with his fantasy are met, and the wanderNymphs and Nereids. ers explain the nature of their quest. One of them speaks of death in many a form, and of the flight from death. I know a little garden-close And though within it no birds sing, There comes a murmur from the shore, For which I cry both day and night, To seek the unforgotten face Who once had dreams of one great victory Wherein that world lay vanquished by And now, the victor in so many an one, Of that fair life, wherein thou seest no ill Once seen, once kissed, once reft from But fear of that fair rest I hope to win me Anigh the murmuring of the sea. "Jason" is, practically, a very long tale from the "Earthly Paradise," as the "Earthly Paradise" is an immense treasure of shorter tales in the manner of "Jason." Mr. Morris reverted for an hour to his fourteenth century, a period when London was "clean." This is a poetic license; many a plague found mediæval London abominably dirty! A Celt himself, no doubt, with the Celt's proverbial way of being impossibilium cupitor, Mr. Morris is in full sympathy with his Breton squire, who in the reign of Edward III., sets forth One day, when I have purged me of my sin. Farewell, it yet may hap that I a king Shall be remembered but by this one thing, That on the morn before ye crossed the have achieved when he set out to find Vinland the Good, and came back no more, whether he was or was not re story of Regin, Otter, Fafnir, and the Dwarf Andvari's Hoard. membered by the Aztecs as Quetzal- It was Reidmar the Ancient begat me; coatl. The tale of the wanderers was Mr. Morris's own; all the rest are of the dateless heritage of our race, fairy tales coming to us, now "softly breathed through the flutes of the Grecians," now told by Sagamen of Iceland. The whole performance is astonishingly equable; we move on a high tableland, where no tall peaks of Parnassus are to be climbed. Once more literature has a narrator, a maker less of songs than of tales; a narrator, on the whole, much more akin to Spenser than to Chaucer, Homer, or Sir Walter. Humor and action are not so prominent as contemplation of a pageant reflected in a fairy mirror. But Mr. Morris has said himself, about his poem, what I am trying to say: Death have we hated, knowing not what it meant; Life have we loved, through green leaf and through sere, Though still the less we knew of its intent: The Earth and Heaven through countless year on year, Slow changing, were to us but curtains fair, Hung round about a little room, where play Weeping and laughter of man's empty day. Mr. Morris had shown, in various ways, the strength of his sympathy with the heroic sagas of Iceland. He had rendered one into verse, in "The Earthly Paradise," above all, "Grettir the Strong" and "The Volsunga" he had done into English prose. His next great poem was "The Story of Sigurd." a poetic rendering of the theme which is, to the North, what the Tale of Troy is to Greece, and to all the world. Mr. Morris took the form of the story which is most archaic, and bears most birthmarks of its savage origin-the version of the "Volsunga," not the German shape of the "Nibelungenlied." He showed extraordinary skill especially in making human and intelligible the and now was he waxen old, And a covetous man and a king; and he bade, and I built him a hall, And a golden glorious house; and thereto the éclaircissement between Sigurd and Brynhild, that most dramatic and most modern moment in the ancient tragedy, the moment where the clouds of savage fancy scatter in the light of a hopeless human love, then, I must confess, I prefer the simple, brief prose of Mr. Morris's translation of the "Volsunga" to his rather periphrastic paraphrase. Every student of poetry may make the comparison for himself, and decide for himself whether the old or the new is better. Again, in the final fight and massacre in the Hall of Atli, I cannot but prefer the Slaying of the Wooers, at the close of the "Odyssey," or the last fight of Roland at Roncesvaux, or the prose version in the "Volsunga." All these are the work of men who were war-smiths as well as song-smiths. Here is a passage from the "murder grim and great:" So he saith in the midst of the foemen with his war-flame reared on high, But all about and around him goes up a bitter cry From the iron men of Atli, and the bickering of the steel But the third stroke fell on his helmcrest, and he stooped to the ruddy dust, And uprose as the ancient Giant, and both his hands were wet: Red then was the world to his eyen, as his hand to the labor he set; Swords shook and fell in his pathway, huge bodies leapt and fell, Harsh girded shield and war-helm like the tempest-smitten bell, And the war-cries ran together, and no man his brother knew, And the dead men loaded the living, as he went the war-wood through; And man 'gainst man was huddled, till no sword rose to smite, And clear stood the glorious Hogni in an island of the fight, And there ran a river of death 'twixt the Niblung and his foes, And therefrom the terror of men and the wrath of the Gods arose. I admit that this does not affect me as does the figure of Odysseus raining his darts of doom, or the courtesy of Roland when the blinded Oliver smites him by mischance, and, indeed, the Keeping of the Stair by Umslopogaas Sends a roar up to the roof-ridge, and the appeals to me more vigorously as a Niblung war-ranks reel strenuous picture of war. To be just Behind the steadfast Gunnar; but lo, to Mr. Morris, let us give his rendering have ye seen the corn, While yet men grind the sickle, by the wind streak overborne When the sudden rain sweeps downward, and summer groweth black, And the smitten wood-side roareth 'neath the driving thunder-wrack? So before the wise-heart Hogni shrank the champions of the East As his great voice shook the timbers in the hall of Atli's feast. There he smote and beheld not the smitten, and by nought were his edges stopped; He smote and the dead were thrust from him; a hand with its shield he lopped; of part of the Slaying of the Wooers, from his translation of the "Odyssey:"_ And e'en as the word he uttered, he drew his keen sword out Brazen, on each side shearing, and with a fearful shout Rushed on him; but Odysseus that very while let fly And smote him with the arrow in the breast, the pap hard by, And drove the swift shaft to the liver, and adown to the ground fell the sword From out of his hand, and doubled he hung above the board, And staggered; and whirling he fell, and the meat was scattered around, There met him Atli's marshal, and his And the double cup moreover, and his arm at the shoulder he shred; Three swords were upreared against him of the best of the kin of the dead; And he struck off a head to the rightward, and his sword through a throat he thrust, forehead smote the ground; And his heart was wrung with torment, and with both feet spurning he smote The high-seat; and over his eyen did the cloud of darkness float. And then it was Amphinomus, who drew his whetted sword But Odysseus the mighty-hearted within he met not there, And fell on, making his onrush 'gainst Who on the beach sat weeping, as oft Odysseus the glorious lord, If perchance he might get him out-doors; but Telemachus him forewent, And a cast of the brazen war-spear from behind him therewith sent Amidmost of his shoulders, that drave through his breast and out, And clattering he fell, and the earth all the breadth of his forehead smote. There is no need to say more of Mr. Morris's "Odyssey." Close to the letter to the Greek he usually keeps, but where are the surge and thunder of the music of Homer? Apparently we must accent the penultimate in "Amphinomus" if the line is to scan. I select a passage of peaceful beauty from Book V.: But all about that cavern there grew a blossoming wood, Of alder and of poplar and of cypress savoring good; And fowl therein wing-spreading were wont to roost and be, For owls were there and falcons, and long-tongued crows of the sea, And deeds of the sea they deal with and thereof they have a care. he was wont to wear His soul with grief and groaning, and weeping; yea, and he As the tears he was pouring downward yet gazed o'er the untilled sea. This is close enough, but And flowing on in order four ways they thence did get is not precisely musical. Why is But I have Hermes "The Flitter"? often ventured to remonstrate against these archaistic peculiarities, which to some extent mar our pleasure in Mr. Morris's translations. In his version of the rich Virgilian measure they are especially out of place. The "Eneid" is rendered with a roughness which might better befit a translation of Ennius. Thus the reader of Mr. Morris's poetical translations has in his hands versions of almost literal closeness, and (what is extremely rare) versions of poetry by a poet. But his acquaintance with Early English and But round the hollow cavern there spread Icelandic has added to the poet a strain and flourished fair A vine of garden breeding, and in its grapes was glad; And four wells of the white water their heads together had, And flowing on in order four ways they thence did get; And soft were the meadows blooming with parsley and violet. Yea, if thither indeed had come e'en one of the Deathless, e'en he Had wondered and gladdened his heart of the philologist, and his English in the "Odyssey," still more in the "Eneid," is occasionally more archaic than the Greek of 900 B.C. So at least it seems to a reader not unversed in attempts to fit the classical poets with an English rendering. But the true test is in the appreciation of the lovers of poetry in general. To them, as to all who desire the restoration of beauty in modern life, Mr. Morris has been a benefactor almost without example. Indeed, did space permit and were adequate knowledge But when o'er all these matters in his mine, Mr. Morris's poetry should have soul he had marvelled amain, been criticised as only a part of the vast Then into the wide cave went he, and industry of his life in many crafts and Calypso, Godhead's Grace, Failed nowise there to know him as she looked upon his face; For never unknown to each other are the Deathless Gods, though they many arts. His place in English life and literature is unique as it is honorable. He has done what he desired to do he has made vast additions to sim Apart from one another may be dwelling ple and stainless pleasures. far away. A. LANG. |