lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

LYRICALPOETRYwhich awaits all men, "that contemplation of inexhaustiblemelancholy whose shadow eclipses thebrightness of the world," as Shelley said and Morrisfelt, while he felt also the splendour which it lendsto the heroism, the intensity it gives to the love, ofmen and women. And love is the central fire of allMorris's poems, narrative and lyrical. If his lovepoemshave not the dramatic variety of Browning's,he is an even more ardent devotee, less sensuous than.Rossetti, less ethereal and inhuman than Shelley. ForMorris the mutual love of a man and a woman, passionand affection blended, is quite simply the greatestgood the world has to give, and if the simplicity andmonotony of his treatment becomes a little wearisomein the tales, it has inspired some of the loveliest lyricsin the language. For the quintessence of Morris'spoetry is in the lyrics, those scattered through thetales, verse and prose, and those gathered together inthe last delightful volume, Poems by the Way (1891).In Jason there is "I know a little garden close," andin The Earthly Paradise the beautiful songs of themonths in Chaucer's "Troilus" stanza of which,though all are delightful in their rendering of Englishscenery, the gem, in passion and cadence (the drawingout of the sentence through the stanza), is October:O Love, turn from the unchanging sea and gazeDown these grey slopes upon the year grown old,A-dying 'mid the autumn-scented haze,That hangeth o'er the hollow in the wold,Where the wind-bitten ancient elms infoldGrey church, long barn, orchard and red-roofed stead,Wrought in dead days for men a long while dead.But some of the loveliest of Morris's lyrics are in thePoems by the Way, written when his love of love had110