Lewis Morris

“ Morris's genius than any of his previous works. There is in them the same purity of expression, the same delicate fancy, the same mastery of technique, and withal the same loftiness of conception."—Scotsman, December 22nd, 1883.
"In some respects we must award him the distinction of having a clearer perception of the springs of nineteenth-century existence than any of his contemporaries.... What could be more magnificent than the following conception of the beginning of things...."—Whitehall Review, October, 1883. ”

“ Morris, Sir Lewis, a poet, born in Carmarthen, Wales; the author of "Songs of Two Worlds," "The Epic of Hades," "A Vision of Saints," &c.; often confounded with the succeeding, with whom he has next to nothing in common; b. 1833.
Morris, William, poet, art-worker, and Socialist, born in Walthamstow, near London, son and heir of a wealthy merchant; studied at Oxford, where he became the lifelong bosom friend of Burne-Jones; of an artistic temperament, he devoted his working hours to decorative art, in particular designing wall-papers ”

“ Morris, Sir Lewis (1833-1907) . -- Poet, b. at Penrhyn, Carnarvonshire, and ed. at Sherborne and Oxf., was called to the Bar, and practised as a conveyancer until 1880, after which he devoted himself to the promotion of higher education in Wales, and became honorary sec. ”

“ Morris has the invaluable gift of recognizing and being in full sympathy with the current ideas and feelings of the time. The broad humanitarianism, the genuine sympathy with the sufferings of the poor and unfortunate, characteristic of our age, is one of the most attractive features of his poetry, and to the revival of the feeling for classical beauty, which may be looked upon as a collateral branch of the 'æsthetic' movement, he owes more than one charming inspiration.... ”

“ Beginning with the first volume, it has gone on increasing."—Liverpool Mercury, November 9th, 1883.
"For ourselves we dare hardly say how high we rank Mr. Morris. This last volume is deserving of highest praise. In some of its contents no living poet, to our mind can surpass him."—Oxford University Herald, March 8th, 1884.
"The gems of this volume, to our mind, are some of the shorter poems, which are full of melody and colour, saturated with lyrical feeling, and marked by that simplicity without which no poem of this class can be called great."—British Quarterly Review, January, 1884. ”

“ The Prince he sought, only great princes, strong
And valorous he found, who bowed them down
Before the power of Evil; but for them
He took no thought, who had seen their master blench
Before the Lord of Light; but him indeed
He saw not yet; filled with the pride of life,
A satisfied soul which bowed not down to wrong,
Touched with desire for good, since good was strong,
But loving strength alone. ”

“ When life ebbs fast and the dim light is low,
When sunk in gloom the day of pleasure ends,
And the night cometh, and your being runs slow,
And nought is left you of your revelries,
Your drunken days, your wantonness, your ill—
And lo! the last dawn rises cold and chill,
And lo! the lightning of All-seeing eyes,
What will you do? ”

“ And found a solitude themselves had made;
They came, as I, to hope which conquers doubt,
Though sun and moon and every star go out;
They ceased, while at their side a still voice said,
"Fear not, have courage; blessed are the dead." ”

“ The chanted madrigal or hymn;
The opera, with its stately throng;
The twilight church aisles stretching long
The spires upon the wooded wold;
The dead pathetic life of old;—
These all the musing mind can fill—
So dead, so past, so living still:
Oh dear dead lives, oh hands long gone,
Whose life, whose Art still lingers on! ”

“ Of a new sorrow and gloom,
And when his soul to comfort them is fain
Finds his voice mute, his form unknown, unseen,
And thinks with irrepressible pain
Of all the happy days which late have been,
And feels his new life's inmost chambers stirred
If only of his own, he might be seen or heard;
Then if, at length,
The father's yearning and overburdened soul
Burst into shape and voice which scorn control
Of its despairing strength,—
Ah Heaven! ah pity for the present dread
Which strikes the old affection, dull and dead! ”

“ Old as the tale of passing hopes and fears!
New as the springtide air, which day by day
Breathes on young lives, and speeds them on their way.
The Roman knew it, and the Hellene too;
Assyrian and Egyptian proved it true;
Who found for youth's young glory and its glow
Serener life, and calmer tides run slow.
And them oblivion takes, and those before,
Whose very name and race we know no more,
To whom, oh Spirit of the World and Man,
Thou didst reveal Thyself when Time began,—
They felt, as I, what none may understand ”

“ By Thy great winds as by an unknown word;
Thy fair, light-winged creatures, blithe and free;
Thy dear brutes living, dying, silently:
Shall I from them no voice to praise Thee find?
Thy praise is hymned by every balmy wind
That wanders o'er a wilderness of flowers;
By every happy brute which asks not why,
But rears its brood and is content to die.
From Thee has come whatever good is ours;—
The gift of love that doth exalt the race;
The gift of childhood with its nameless grace;
The gift of age which slow through ripe decay,
Like some fair fading sunset dies away ”

“ Lies the tortured figure to which are bended
The knees of the passers who gaze on the sight,
And the people fall prostrate, and kiss and mourn
The fair dead limbs which the nails have torn.
And the passionate music comes from the quire,
Full of soft chords of a yearning pity
The mournful voices accordant aspire
To the far-off gates of the Heavenly City;
And the soft clear alto, soaring high and higher,
Mounts now a surging fountain, now a heavenward fire.
Ay, eighteen centuries after the day,
A world-worn populace kneel and pray,
As they pass by and gaze on the limbs unbroken. ”

“ Which scarce has risen ere it die;
Or to a bird, whose rapid flight
Eludes the dazed observer's sight,
Or a stray shaft of glancing light,
That breaks upon the gathered gloom
Which veils some monumental tomb;
Or some sweet Spring flowers' fleeting bloom;—
Mixed part of reason, part belief,
Of pain and pleasure, joy and grief,
As changeful as the Spring, and brief;—
A wave, a shadow, a breath, a strife,
With change on change for ever rife:—
This is the thing we know as life. ”

“ I know that Thou art good and mild,
Though sickness take and break the helpless child;
'Twas Thou, none else, that gav'st the mother's love,
And even her anguish came from Thee above.
I am content to be that which Thou wilt:
Tho' humble be my pathway and obscure,
Yet from all stain of guilt
Keep Thou me pure.
Or if Thy evil still awhile must find
Its seat within my mind,
Be it as Thou wilt, I am not afraid.
And for the world Thy hand has made,
Thy beautiful world, so wondrous fair:
Thy mysteries of dawn, Thy unclouded days;
Thy mountains, soaring high through Thy pure air ”

“ Here, once again, by the chill blue river,
The blighted buds on the branches shiver;
Here, again, are the holiday groups, with delight
Gaping in wonder at some new sight
'Tis an open doorway, squalid and low,
And crowds which ceaselessly come and go.
Careless enough ere they see the sight
Which leaves the gay faces pallid and white:
Something is there which can change their mood,
And check the holiday flow of the blood.
For the face which they see is the face of Death. ”

“ You will not find in his work a trace of that tired pomposity which tells us that the great man is showing off, or of that empty pretentious singularity which betrays the vanity of the lonely British artist. Morris was never the self-conscious master calling on sun and moon to stand and watch him sign his name, neither was he the shy genius of the English hedgerows sheltering his little talent from contemporary infection and the chill winds of criticism. ”

“ When I mentioned to Lord G. what Morris came about, he only laughed, and said, "It was a clever dodge of the half-pay,—he wanted an invitation;" and I see now that such must have been his object. The more one sees of mankind, the greater appears their meanness; and in my heart I feel how unsuited guileless, simple-hearted creatures like myself are to combat against the stratagems and ambuscades of this wicked world. ”

“ And today he owned himself defeated: life had the upper hand; if there had been any means of flight or place to flee to, if the world had been so ordered that a man could leave it like a place of entertainment, Morris would have instantly resigned all further claim on its rewards and pleasures, and, with inexpressible contentment, ceased to be. As it was, one aim shone before him: he could get home. Even as the sick dog crawls under the sofa, Morris could shut the door of John Street and be alone. ”

“ It was a grey-haired man who finally leaped upon the bar and summed up all opinion in a brief statement.
"Whatever Whistlin' Dan has done before," he said, "this day he's done a man-sized job in a man's way. Morris, before he died, said enough to clear up most of this lad's past, particular about the letter from Jim Silent that talked of a money bribe. Morris didn't have a chance to swear to what he said, but a dying man speaks truth. ”

“ For the last two years of his life Morris was prostrated by an incurable and distressing illness, which he bore with characteristic fortitude, preserving his cheerfulness and his love of a good story to the last. He retired to the railway-side hamlet of Harold Wood in Essex, and there he died on 12 May 1894. ”

“ Eventually there was a tap at the bedroom door, and it was opened slightly from the outside, and a voice expostulated: 'Really, the whole house is awakened. What is the matter? Do speak more quietly and let us get to sleep.'
This interruption acted as an exorcism. Morris quietened down as suddenly as he had flared up. He lifted 'Huckleberry Finn,' which he had tossed on the bed in the course of his fulmination, and making a turn round the room, he offered me his hand in a most friendly manner, remarking simply: 'I have been going it a bit loudly—don't you think? ”

“ Morris's rooms were in the little quadrangle affectionately known among Exeter men as Hell Quad, with windows overlooking the small but beautiful Fellows' garden, the immense chestnut tree that overspreads Brasenose Lane, and the grey masses of the Bodleian Library. There the long nights set in to crown the long days. On the first night of one of their terms in college, after Burne-Jones had arrived late from Birmingham, and had supper, "presently Morris came tumbling in," he wrote home next day, "and talked incessantly for the next seven hours or longer." ”

“ Thus it was that, before and after the adoption of his final political creed, Morris carried on his work patiently from day to day, and thus it was that he exhorted others by word and example to carry on theirs; "not living like fools and fine gentlemen, and not beaten by the muddle, but like good fellows trying by some dim candle-light to set our workshop ready against to-morrow's daylight." ”

“ As the spring advanced, and Naples became over-sultry for those reared in northern climes, Morris took her to cooler regions. Together they wandered through Switzerland and the Austrian Tyrol, and only with the approach of the winter season were they again in residence at "Mon Bijou."
With the ensuing spring, Morris's restless spirit once more asserted itself, and the summer saw them in London. There he held a social position which led him into circles where no man can introduce a woman who occupies the position Evarne now held. ”

“ With the most famous of all later Londoners there was in certain aspects even a closer analogy, which became more marked in the later years of Morris's life. None of his friends could fail to notice how his potent and imperious personality recalled that of Samuel Johnson. The delight in contradiction and paradox under which there lay a fundamental integrity of intellect; the sanity and strong practical sense; the haunting fear of death, to a degree which would be called morbid in any less imaginative nature ”

“ Morris and the rest of our male selves sat up till midnight in the library, chatting over the events of the day and considering how to improve the propaganda work of the League. When the others had gone, Morris proposed that he should accompany me to my bedroom and read a bit of 'Huckleberry Finn' to me before going to sleep. 'It will get the nasty taste of to-day's squabbling out of our minds,' he said. ”

“ The poems which form the text of Queen Summer (1891) , Renascence (1891) , and The Sirens Three (1886) are by the artist himself.
In the early ’eighties under Morris’s influence he was closely associated with the Socialist movement. He did as much as Morris himself to bring art into the daily life of all classes. With this object in view he devoted much attention to designs for textile stuffs, for wall-papers, and to house decoration; but he also used his art for the direct advancement of the Socialist cause. ”

“ What Rossetti thought of his two disciples is seen in a letter written by him to William Allingham in December, 1856, when Morris had been nearly a year with Street. He found both “wonders after their kind.” “Jones is doing designs which quite put one to shame,” he wrote, “so full are they of everything—Aurora Leighs of art. He will take the lead in no time.” Morris he deemed “one of the finest little fellows alive—with a touch of the incoherent, but a real man,” and “in [Pg 43] all illumination and work of that kind” he considered him quite unrivalled by anything modern that he knew. ”