The Earthly Paradise

By WILLIAM MORRIS. Part III. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

OF late it would seem that the poet, or maker, has turned himself too wilfully into the versifier, or manufacturer. And when we take up such bulky volumes as Mr. Morris has produced, in quick succession, during the last two or three years, we have a certain overgrown and still cumulative fear or suspicion of the days of labor, — to say nothing of nights of waking, — consumed in doubtfully profitable factory-work. This, we say, is our fear, and we cannot but feel afterward that there is too much of realization. For, however full of sweetness and beauty of feeling and richness of words these books are, their sweetness is long drawn out, even love must labor strenuously through them, and a crude surfeit reigns. Often, too, their stories are almost lost in the telling. Yes, to be sure it is good to have wide fields to delay and wander in sometimes, to feel our feet tangled in soft luxuries of grass, and turn backward and sideways to pluck posies ; but the longest way around is not the nearest way home for the true artist, when he wishes to lodge himself securely overnight in the heart of his reader. He may find that far-off, invisible person tired of waiting (there are many long-sitting and longsuffering readers, nevertheless), with the door shut, the light put out, and—is he musing or asleep ?

The third part of “ The Earthly Paradise " contains six separate poems, — two for each of the autumnal months, — three of which are from old Greek fables or histories, and the other three from Northern sources. For the former Mr. Morris has taken the root from the Greek story, and his invention has supplied new leaves and branches, making a wide-spread tree for us to lie under in summer idleness. These Greek themes are “ The Death of Paris,” ”The Story of Accontius and Cydippe,” and “ The Story of Rhodope.”

“The Death of Paris,” with which the autumnal period of Mr. Morris’s book opens, follows with slight difference the suggestions of the classical fable ; but the various speeches seem to wound and hopelessly cripple the poem, and are so confused as to render some of the scenes between Paris and Œnone hardly intelligible; we only know certainly that Paris is left alone at the close, and, with a cry for Helen on his lips, — the ruling passion breaking out at last, — is dead.

“The Story of Accontius and Cydippe ” was in the original a pretty little story, but Mr. Morris changes it somewhat (no one need insist on the history), introducing as machinery the celestial nakedness of Venus, who purveys the prepared apple to Accontius in a dream ; and he is a long while about it, — thirty pages ; this being one of the instances we have hinted where the story is very charmingly dragged to death, or luxuriously lost, in the narration.

“The Story of Rhodope ” is, we believe, the antique thread from which the priceless modern fairy-jewel of Cinderella is suspended. Mr. Morris introduces Rhodope as the daughter, late born, of poor and aged parents; at her birth a dream of her father’s having hinted some high future which awaits her, she grows up under the subtile education of this forecast, a stranger among her kindred and people, dreaming and longing, beautiful, but cold and reserved. One day, while her father is brooding over his misfortunes and her discontent, he shows her a pair of jewelled and wonderful shoes which he got long ago as a prize in some sea-capture ; and she, carrying them as a gift from him to the high-priest of a neighboring temple, dreamfully tries them on, and, afterward stopping for a bath by the way, leaves them on the shore, and the rape by the eagle follows. The poem, though too long, and tedious with its minute descriptions here and there, is the fullest of life, and seems to us the most satisfactory piece from the Greek themes in the present volume ; something of reality is impressed upon us, especially in the closing portion, where the separation of the new fate from the old life and its associations takes place, affecting us with much of the pathos of a genuine human history. Rhodope, who shows a tenderness of feeling upon the sudden change of her fortune, is desirous of having her aged parents accompany her and share her great change ; but after the ship that bears her away is parted from shore, she awakes from an abstraction and discovers that their hearts failed them at the gangway, that they have remained behind, and that her new life is cut off by fate entirely from her old one. The following closing stanzas well describe her acceptation of this destiny : —

The other three poems are “The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” “ The Man who never laughed again,” and “ The Lovers of Gudrun.” The first affects us vaguely but subtly, and seems to have in it somewhat of the same fairy-tale that is familiar as “The Sleeping Beauty.” It pretends to be a dream, and its impression really overtakes us as a dream reaches us by daylight,—something gossamer-like and impalpable that escapes and eludes yet charms us. The poem is full of tender and beautiful passages, — sensuous often, but pure as the white nakedness of marble, — and is written in the octosyllabic rhymeverses, which are often managed so happily by Mr. Morris, especially in his effective modulations and skilful use of pauses. Here he seems to have closely imitated Chaucer, to whom his method and manner have been carelessly compared by people who have never cared to read Chaucer. But he can hardly be credited with the real simple, hearty directness and freshness of Chaucer. His simplicity is not always of natural birth, for in it we too often feel the constraint of labored art trying unsuccessfully to conceal itself. “The Man who never laughed again ” is somewhat similar in its suggestions to the last ; having mystery and enchantment and the atmosphere of “ fairy lands forlorn.”

But of all the poems in this new volume, it is in “The Lovers of Gudrun" that we are made to feel that we are in presence of assured flesh and blood and the hearts of men and women with real personality and characters, and it is here, we think, Mr. Morris touches us most surely. “ The Lovers of Gudrun ” is a story of Iceland, and refers to the period of the introduction of Christianity into that island. There is more of human action herein, with a series of incidents each newly interesting to the reader; and the unhappy loves of Gudrun with Kiatan and Bodli, Kiatan’s trusted foster-brother, are set before us in such a way as to fill us with a sense of genuine sorrow and suffering. It is a painful story, — a sad and tragic history. It is written in the simpler heroic rhymed verse, and is generally straightforward and vigorous, not wearying us with languid monotones, as do many of the long poems in stanzas whose lines are too often oppressive with monosyllables. This poem is far the longest in the volume, and, as the poet tells us in his argument, “ this story shows how two friends loved a fair woman, and how he who loved her best had her to wife, though she loved him little or not at all ; and how one of these two friends gave shame to and received death of the other, who in his turn came to his end by reason of that deed.” The following final closing passage in which Gudrun, in her blind old age, answers her son Bodli’s question as to which of her four husbands she loved the best, will indicate perhaps the strong quality of the verse and poem : —

The last line refers, of course, to Kiartan (whose home was Herdholt), whom she had loved passionately and to whom she had been betrothed ; through a fatal misunderstanding, she had wedded Bodli, his foster-brother, whom she did not love, instead, — thus bringing about sorrow, hatred, ruin, and death.

These poems, we think, generally compare favorably with those in the preceding parts of “ The Earthly Paradise,” though perhaps no one of them floats in memory so clear in its charm as “The Love of Alcestis,” or touches us so distinctly as “The Proud King.” They are nearly all brightened through frequently with fresh, healthful landscapes, painted in lines that have a dewy clearness and sweetness ; here is such a picture from “ The Lovers of Gudrun ” : —

But in this third part of Mr. Morris’s book, wherein we have, so to speak, lost sight of the prelude to the poems and the embracing fiction that gives the book its general title, we feel that the machinery is rather an added weariness and interruption. The company by whom and among whom these tales are feigned to be told appear vague and without character, — ghostly personages, that move about in worlds not realized, and seem to have no excuse for being anywhere. Nor are the little pieces of monotonous boundary verses which describe the beginning and the ending of each month very desirable, although one of them, under the head of “ October,” and beginning,

“ O love, turn from the unchanging sea, and gaze,” is as delicious in tone as Indian summer and “divinest melancholy.”

“Is Mr. Morris a great poet?” It is very easy for contemporary critics of prophetic confidence to answer this question, and take the far-off province of their greatgrand-children, but the great-grandchildren still think they have the better right to answer for themselves. That Mr. Morris is great in proportion to the bulk of his books, however, we may venture to doubt. But it is safe to say that he is an unusually sweet and fine poet, who if condensed sufficiently would find more present readers to delight in him and more readers in the future to keep him from being forgotten. Enough is good as a feast, and we should want more than enough rather than have it.