POETRY.
Intent as he was upon the artistic success of his work in decoration, and
ardent in giving time and thought to achieving this success, Morris was
far from excluding poetry from the sum of his occupations. The five years
following his marriage (1859-1864), indeed, were barren of any important
literary work. He had planned, somewhat anticipating the large scale of
his later verse, a cycle of twelve poems on the Trojan War, but he
completed only six of the twelve, and the project was presently abandoned.
After the Red House was sold, however, and he was back in London with the
time on his hands saved from the daily journey, he began at once to make
poetry of a form entirely different from anything he had previously
written. The little sheaf of poems contained in his early volume had been
put together by the hand of a boy. The poem published in June, 1867, under
the title _The Life and Death of Jason_, was the work of a man in full
possession of his faculty. It was simple, certain, musical, and
predestined to speedy popularity, even Tennyson, with whom Morris was
not a favourite, liking the Jason. It flowed with sustained if monotonous
sweetness through seventeen books in rhymed pentameter, occasionally
broken by octosyllabic songs. Although published as a separate poem, on
account of the length to which it ran, apparently almost in despite of its
author's will, it had been intended to form part of the series called _The
Earthly Paradise_, the first division of which followed it in 1868. This
ambitious work was suggested by Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, and consists
of no fewer than twenty-four long narrative poems, set in a framework of
delicate descriptive verse containing passages that are the very flower of
Morris's poetic charm. The scheme of the arrangement is interesting. A
little band of Greeks, "the seed of the Ionian race," are found living
upon a nameless island in a distant sea. Hither at the end of the
fourteenth century--the time of Chaucer--come certain wanderers of
Germanic, Norse, and Celtic blood who have set out on a voyage in search
of a land that is free from death, driven from their homes by the
pestilence sweeping over them. Hospitably received, the wanderers spend
their time upon the island entertaining their hosts with the legends
current in their day throughout Western Europe, and in turn are
entertained with the Hellenic legends which have followed the line of
living Greek tradition and are told by the fourteenth-century islanders in
the mediaeval form and manner proper to them at that time. Among the
wanderers are a Breton and a Suabian, and the sources from which the
stories are drawn have a wide range. They were at first, indeed, intended
to represent the whole stock of the world's legends, but this field was
too vast for even the great facility of Morris, and much was set aside. At
the end we find _The Lovers of Gudrun_, taken from the Laxdaela Saga of
Iceland, and bearing witness in the grimness of its tragedy and the
fierceness of its Northern spirit to the powerful influence of the
Icelandic literature upon the mind of Morris. It is the only story in the
collection which has dominated his dreamy mediaevalism and struck fire from
his pen.
[Illustration: _Morris's Bed, with Hangings designed by himself and
embroidered by his Daughter_]
In _The Earthly Paradise_ we have all the qualities that make its author
dear to most of his readers. The mind is steeped in the beauty of imagery,
and content to have emotion and thought lulled by the long, melancholy
swing of lines that seem like the echo of great poetry without its living
voice. Such poetry is what Morris wished his decorations to be--the
"lesser art" that brings repose from the quickening of soul with which a
masterpiece is greeted. The spirit revealed through the fluent murmur of
the melodious words is very true to him and lies at the root of all his
efforts toward making life fair to the eyes and soothing to the heart. The
"unimpassioned grief," the plaintive longing with which he regarded the
fleeting and unsatisfying aspects of a world so beautiful and so
sorrowful, never found more exquisite expression than in passage after
passage of this pellucid and lovely verse. The flight from death and the
seeking after eternal life on this material globe constitute a theme that
had for him a singular fitness. No one could have rendered with more
sensitive appreciation the mood of men who set their life at an unmeasured
price. No one could have expressed the dread of dying with more poetic
sympathy. The preludes to the stories told on the island are poems
addressed to the months of the changing year, and not one is free from the
grievous suggestion of loss or the weary burden of fear and dejection.
Read without the intervening narratives, they wrap the mind in an
atmosphere of foreboding. There is no welcome unaccompanied by the shadow
of farewell. There is no leaping of the heart to meet sunshine and fair
weather without its corresponding faintness of shrinking from the clouds
and darkness certain to follow. With a brave determination to seize
exultation on the wing, he cries to March:
Yea, welcome March! and though I die ere June,
Yet for the hope of life I give thee praise,
Striving to swell the burden of the tune
That even now I hear thy brown birds raise,
Unmindful of the past or coming days;
Who sing: "O joy! a new year is begun:
What happiness to look upon the sun!"
But what follows? The sure reminder of the silence that shall come after
the singing:
Ah, what begetteth all this storm of bliss
But Death himself, who crying solemnly,
E'en from the heart of sweet Forgetfulness,
Bids us "Rejoice, lest pleasureless ye die.
Within a little time must ye go by.
Stretch forth your open hands, and while ye live
Take all the gifts that Death and Life may give."
And in the stanzas for October, written, Mr. Mackail tells us, in memory
of a happy autumn holiday, we have the most poignant note of which he was
capable:
Come down, O Love; may not our hands still meet,
Since still we live to-day, forgetting June,
Forgetting May, deeming October sweet--
--O hearken, hearken! through the afternoon,
The grey tower sings a strange old tinkling tune!
Sweet, sweet, and sad, the toiling year's last breath,
Too satiate of life to strive with death.
And we too--will it not be soft and kind,
That rest from life, from patience and from pain;
That rest from bliss we know not when we find;
That rest from Love which ne'er the end can gain?--
Hark, how the tune swells, that erewhile did wane?
Look up, Love!--ah, cling close and never move!
How can I have enough of life and love?
June, the high tide of the year, he selects as the fitting month in which
to tell of something sad:
Sad, because though a glorious end it tells,
Yet on the end of glorious life it dwells.
In February he asks:
Shalt thou not hope for joy new born again,
Since no grief ever born can ever die
Through changeless change of seasons passing by?
[Illustration: _Kelmscott Manor House from the Orchard_]
Thus across the charming images of French romance, Hellenic legend, and
Norse drama, falls the suggestion of his own personality, and it is due to
this pervading personal mood or sentiment that _The Earthly Paradise_ has
a power to stir the imagination almost wholly lacking to his later work.
It cannot be said that even here he is able to awaken a strong emotion.
But the human element is felt. A warm intelligence of sympathy creeps in
among dreams and shadows, the reader is aware of a living presence near
him and responds to the appeal of human weakness and depression. It is
because Morris in the languid cadences of _The Earthly Paradise_ spoke
with his own voice and took his readers into the confidence of his
hopeless thoughts, that the book will remain for the multitude the chief
among his works, the only one that portrays for us in its most
characteristic form the inmost quality of his temperament. Nor does he
seem to have had for any other book of his making quite the intimate
affection he so frankly bestowed upon this. The final stanzas in which the
well-known message is sent to "my Master, Geoffrey Chaucer," confide the
autobiographic vein in which it was written. Says the Book of its maker:
I have beheld him tremble oft enough
At things he could not choose but trust to me,
Although he knew the world was wise and rough:
And never did he fail to let me see
His love,--his folly and faithlessness, maybe;
And still in turn I gave him voice to pray
Such prayers as cling about an empty day.
Thou, keen-eyed, reading me, mayst read him through,
For surely little is there left behind;
No power great deeds unnameable to do;
No knowledge for which words he may not find;
No love of things as vague as autumn wind--
Earth of the earth lies hidden by my clay,
The idle singer of an empty day.
Written at great speed, one day being marked by a product of seven hundred
lines, the last of _The Earthly Paradise_ was in the hands of the printers
by the end of 1870, and Morris was free for his Icelandic journey and new
interests.
[Illustration: _Portrait of Edward Burne-Jones_
_By Watts_]
He was no sooner home from Iceland than he set to work upon a curious
literary experiment--a dramatic poem of very complicated construction,
called _Love is Enough, or the Freeing of Pharamond: A Morality_, the
intricate metrical design of which is interestingly explained by Mr.
Mackail. Rossetti and Coventry Patmore both spoke in terms of enthusiasm
of its unusual beauty. The story is that of a king, Pharamond, who has
been gallant on the field and wise on the throne, but is haunted by
visions of an ideal love sapping his energy and driving peace from his
heart. He deserts his people, and with his henchman, Oliver, wanders
through the world until he encounters Azalais, a low-born maiden, who
satisfies his dream. He returns to find that his people have become
estranged from him and he abdicates at once, to retire into obscurity with
his love. There has been an obvious struggle on the part of the poet
to obtain a strong emotional effect, and certain passages have indeed the
"passionate lyric quality" ascribed to them by Rossetti; but as a drama it
hardly carries conviction. The songs written to be sung between the scenes
have nevertheless much of the haunting beauty soon to be lost from his
work, and of these the following is a felicitous example:
Love is enough: it grew up without heeding
In the days when ye knew not its name nor its measure,
And its leaflets untrodden by the light feet of pleasure
Had no boast of the blossom, no sign of the seeding,
As the morning and evening passed over its treasure.
And what do ye say then?--that Spring long departed
Has brought forth no child to the softness and showers;
That we slept and we dreamed through the Summer of flowers;
We dreamed of the Winter, and waking dead-hearted
Found Winter upon us and waste of dull hours.
Nay, Spring was o'er happy and knew not the reason,
And Summer dreamed sadly, for she thought all was ended
In her fulness of wealth that might not be amended,
But this is the harvest and the garnering season,
And the leaf and the blossom in the ripe fruit are blended.
It sprang without sowing, it grew without heeding,
Ye knew not its name and ye knew not its measure,
Ye noted it not 'mid your hope and your pleasure;
There was pain in its blossom, despair in its seeding,
But daylong your bosom now nurseth its treasure.
Although Morris planned a beautifully decorated edition of the poem which
was highly valued by him, its failure to impress itself upon the public
was no great grief to him, and he put it cheerfully out of mind to devote
himself to translation and to Icelandic literature.
The surprising task to which he first turned was a verse translation of
Virgil's _AEneid_, in which he attempted to give the closest possible
rendering of the Latin and to emphasise the romantic side of Virgil's
genius. He followed with an almost word-for-word accuracy the lines and
periods of the original using, and he threw over the poem a glamour of
romance, but Mr. Mackail says truly that he had taken his life in his
hands in essaying a classic subject with his inadequate training and
unclassic taste. The same authority, who on this subject, certainly, is
not to be disputed by the lay reader, considers the result a success from
Morris's own point of view, declaring that he "vindicated the claim of the
romantic school to a joint ownership with the classicists in the poem
which is not only the crowning achievement of classical Latin, but the
fountain-head of romanticism in European literature." The opposing critics
are fairly represented by Mr. Andrew Lang, who, in this case as in many
another, is an ideal intermediary between scholar and general reader.
"There is no more literal verse-translation of any classic poem in
English," he says, "but Mr. Morris's manner and method appear to me to be
mistaken. Virgil's great charm is his perfection of style and the
exquisite harmony of his numbers. These are not represented by the
singularly rude measures and archaistic language of Mr. Morris. Like Mr.
Morris, Virgil was a learned antiquarian, and perhaps very accomplished
scholars may detect traces of voluntary archaism in his language and
style. But these, if they exist, certainly do not thrust themselves on the
notice of most readers of the _AEneid_. Mr. Morris's phrases would almost
seem uncouth in a rendering of Ennius. For example, take
'manet alta mente repostum
Judicium Paridis, spretaeque injuria formae.'
This is rendered in a prose version by a fine and versatile scholar, 'deep
in her soul lies stored the judgment of Paris, the insult of her slighted
beauty.' Mr. Morris translates:
'her inmost heart still sorely did enfold
That grief of body set at naught by Paris' doomful deed.'
Can anything be much less Virgilian? Is it even intelligible without the
Latin? What modern poet would naturally speak of 'grief of body set at
naught,' or call the judgment of Paris 'Paris' doomful deed'? Then 'manet
alta mente repostum' is strangely rendered by 'her inmost heart still
sorely did enfold.' This is an example of the translation at its worst,
but defects of the sort illustrated are so common as to leave an
impression of wilful ruggedness, and even obscurity, than which what can
be less like Virgil? Where Virgil describes the death of Troilus, 'et
versa pulvis inscribitus hasta' ('and his reversed spear scores the
dust'), Mr. Morris has 'his wrested spear a-writing in the dust,' and
Troilus has just been 'a-fleeing weaponless.' Our doomful deed, is that to
be a-translating thus is to write with wrested pen, and to give a
rendering of Virgil as unsatisfactory as it is technically literal. In
short, Mr. Morris's _AEneid_ seems on a par with Mr. Browning's
_Agamemnon_. But this," Mr. Lang is careful to add, "is a purely personal
verdict: better scholars and better critics have expressed a far higher
opinion of Mr. Morris's translation of Virgil."
Mr. Lang's whimsical despair over the affectations of language which
abound in the translation of the _AEneid_ with less pertinence than in many
other writings of Morris where also they abound, recalls the remonstrance
that Stevenson could not resist writing out in the form of a letter
although it was never sent on its mission. Acknowledging his debt to
Morris for many "unforgettable poems," the younger writer and more
accomplished student of language protests against the indiscriminate use
of the word _whereas_ in the translations from the sagas. "For surely,
Master," he says, "that tongue that we write, and that you have
illustrated so nobly, is yet alive. She has her rights and laws, and is
our mother, our queen, and our instrument. Now in that living tongue,
_where_ has one sense, _whereas_ another."
The translation of the _AEneid_ was published under the title of _The
AEneids_, in the autumn of 1875. Morris had written a good part of it in
the course of his trips back and forth on the Underground Railway, using
for these first drafts a stiff-covered copybook, which was his constant
companion. In the summer of the same year he had brought out a volume of
the translations from the Icelandic which he was making in collaboration
with Mr. Magnusson, calling it _Three Northern Love-Stories and Other
Tales_. He had still, he declared "but few converts to Saga-ism," and he
regarded his translating from the Icelandic as a pure luxury, adopting it
for a Sunday amusement. During the winter of 1875-76, however, he was
embarked on a cognate enterprise of the utmost importance to him, although
he thought, and with truth, that his public would be indifferent to it.
This was the epic poem which he called _The Story of Sigurd the Volsung_,
based on the Volsunga Saga, the story of the great Northern heroes told
and re-told from generation to generation, polished and perfected until
the final form, in which it preserves the traditions of the people who
cherish it, is the noblest attained in the Icelandic legends. Morris had
published a prose translation of the saga in 1870, and the following
passage from his preface shows how deeply his emotions were stirred by his
subject:
"As to the literary quality of this work we might say much," he writes,
"but we think we may well trust the reader of poetic insight to break
through whatever entanglement of strange manners or unused element may at
first trouble him, and to meet the nature and beauty with which it is
filled: we cannot doubt that such a reader will be intensely touched by
finding amidst all its wildness and remoteness such startling realism,
such subtlety, such close sympathy with all the passions that may move
himself to-day. In conclusion, we must again say how strange it seems to
us, that this Volsung Tale, which is in fact an unversified poem, should
never before have been translated into English. For this is the Great
Story of the North, which should be to all our race what the tale of Troy
was to the Greeks--to all our race first, and afterwards, when the change
of the world has made our race nothing more than a name of what has
been--a story too--then should it be to those that come after us no less
than the Tale of Troy has been to us."
In the course of the following six years, during which he was constantly
increasing his intimacy with the literature of the North, an impulse not
unlike that which tempted Tennyson toward the _Idylls of the King_ led him
to try the winning of a wider audience for the tale of great deeds and
elemental passions by which he himself had been so much inspired. In the
prose translation he had given the Volsunga Saga to the public as it had
been created for an earlier public of more savage tastes and fiercer
tendencies. Now he proposed to divest it of some of the childish and ugly
details that formed a stumbling block to the modern reader (though
plausible and interesting enough to those for whom they were invented),
and to add to the "unversified poem" rhyme and metre, emphasising the
essential points and such characteristics of the actors as most appealed
to him. A comparison of the saga with the poem will show that in his
effort to preserve the heroic character of the antique conception by
accentuating everything pleasing, leaving out much of the rudeness and
cruelty, and adorning it with copious descriptive passages, he robs the
story of a great part of the wild life stirring in its ancient forms, and
more or less confuses and involves it. The modern poem really requires for
its right understanding a mind more instructed in its subject than the
prose translation of the old saga, and readers to whom the latter is
unfamiliar may find a plain outline of the story not superfluous.
In the translation, the origin of the noble Volsung race, of which Sigurd
is the flower and crown, is traced to Sigi, called the son of Odin, and
sent out from his father's land for killing a thrall. He is fortunate in
war, marries a noble wife, and rules over the land of the Huns. His son is
named Rerir. Volsung is the son of Rerir, and thus the great-grandson of
Odin himself. He marries the daughter of a giant, and the ten sons and one
daughter of this union are strong in sinew and huge in size, the Volsung
race having the fame of being "great men and high-minded and far above the
most of men both in cunning and in prowess and all things high and
mighty." Volsung becomes in his turn king over Hunland, and builds for
himself a noble Hall in the centre of which grows an oak-tree whose limbs
"blossom fair out over the roof of the hall," and the trunk of which is
called Branstock.
The poem opens with the description of a wedding-feast held in this Hall
for Signy, King Volsung's daughter, who has been sought in marriage by
Siggeir, King of the Goths, a smaller and meaner race than the Volsungs.
Signy is not content with her fate, but her father has deemed the match to
be a wise one, and, eminent in filial obedience as in all things else, she
yields. From this point for some distance saga and poem march together
save for certain minor changes intended to increase Signy's charm. During
the feasting a one-eyed stranger enters the Hall and thrusts his sword up
to its hilt into the tree-trunk, saying that who should draw the sword
from the trunk should have it for his own and find it the best he had ever
borne in his hand. This, of course, is Odin. Siggeir tries to draw the
sword, and after him his nobles, and then the sons of King Volsung, but
none succeeds until Sigmund, the twin of Signy, draws it lightly forth as
an easy task. Siggeir is wroth and offers to buy the sword for thrice its
weight in gold, but Sigmund will not part with it, and Siggeir sets sail
for home in dudgeon, though concealing his feelings from the Volsungs and
inviting them cordially to visit him in Gothland. Signy reads the future,
and implores her father to undo the marriage and let Siggeir depart
without her. (In the poem Morris has her offer herself as a sacrifice if
her father will but remain in his kingdom and decline Siggeir's
invitation.) King Volsung, however, insists on keeping his troth, and
Signy and Siggeir depart, followed in due time by King Volsung and his
sons and nobles in response to Siggeir's request. What Signy prophesied
comes to pass and King Volsung falls at the hands of the Goths while his
ten sons are taken captive. Now Signy prays her husband that her brothers
be put for a time in the stocks, since home to her mind comes "the saw
that says _Sweet to eye while seen_." Siggeir is delighted to consent
though he deems her "mad and witless" to wish longer suffering for her
brothers. Here the poem departs from the original in that Morris puts the
idea of the stocks into the mind of Siggeir in answer to Signy's
suggestion that her brothers be spared for a little time. Sigmund and the
rest of the brothers are taken to the wildwood, and a beam is placed on
their feet, and night by night for nine nights a she-wolf comes to devour
one of them. (In the poem Morris hastens matters somewhat by having two
wolves appear each night to despatch the brothers two at a time.) Each
morning Signy sends a messenger to the wildwood who brings back the woeful
news. Finally she thinks of a ruse, and on the tenth night the messenger
is sent to smear the face of Sigmund, now the sole remaining brother, with
honey, putting some also into his mouth. When the wolf comes she licks his
face, and then puts her tongue into his mouth to get the last delicious
drop. Sigmund promptly closes his teeth upon her tongue and in the
struggle that ensues Sigmund's bonds are burst and the wolf escapes,
leaving her tongue between his teeth. This incident was probably not
sufficiently heroic to please Morris, and in the poem no mention is made
of Signy's clever device, Sigmund gaining his freedom in a more dignified
fashion and the details being slurred over lightly, with a vague and
general allusion to snapping "with greedy teeth." Sigmund dwells in the
wildwood in hiding, and Signy sends to him in turn her two sons by King
Siggeir, that he may test their fitness to help avenge the fate of her
family. Here again Morris mitigates the stern temper of Signy for a more
womanly type. In the saga when Signy finds that the boys are not stout
enough of heart to accomplish her purpose she bids Sigmund kill them at
once: "Why should such as they live longer?" In the poem, however, when
Signy sends her son to Sigmund he is delivered with the diplomatic message
that if his heart avail not he may "wend the ways of his fate," and when
it is found that his heart does not avail, he is returned in safety to his
mother, Sigmund awaiting the slow coming of the competent one.
[Illustration: _William Morris_
_From painting by Watts_]
The story of the birth of Sinfjotli, in whose veins runs unmixed the blood
of the Volsungs, is given a certain dignity not accorded it in Wagner's
familiar version of the legend as Mr. Buxton Forman, Morris's most devoted
critic, has pointed out, but true to the account in the original saga. The
saga is followed, also, in the burning of Siggeir's Hall by Sigmund
and Sinfjotli, but the Signy who kisses her brother in "soft and sweet"
farewell certainly fails to recall to the mind the vengeful creature of
the original. Sigmund returns to the Hall of the Volsungs with Sinfjotli,
and marries Borghild. Presently Sinfjotli sails abroad with the brother of
Queen Borghild, Gudrod by name, and kills him for reason--as given in the
translation--of their rivalry in loving "an exceeding fair woman." In the
poem, however, Morris records a shabby trick played upon Sinfjotli by
Gudrod in the dividing of their spoils of battle, making this the cause of
the duel in which Gudrod was killed. Sinfjotli returns to his home with
the news of Gudrod's death, and Borghild in revenge poisons him. Sigmund
then sends her away and takes for his wife fair Hiordis, meeting his death
at the hand of Odin himself, who appears to him in battle and shatters the
sword he had drawn in his youth from the Volsung Branstock. As he lies
dying he tells Hiordis that she must take good care of their child, who is
to carry on the Volsung tradition, and must guard well the shards of
Odin's sword for him. Then comes the carrying away of Hiordis by a
sea-king to his kingdom in Denmark, and here ends, rightly speaking, the
epic of Sigmund's career, which, as Mr. Mackail has said, is a separate
story neither subordinate to nor coherent with the later epic of Sigurd,
but which Morris could not forbear uniting to it. Sigurd the Volsung, the
golden-haired, the shining one, the symbol of the sun, is born of Hiordis
in the home of King Elf, and fostered by Regin, an aged man and "deft in
every cunning save the dealings of the sword." When Sigurd has grown to be
a boy of high mind and stout heart, Regin urges him to ask of King Elf a
horse. This he does, and is sent to choose one for himself. He chooses the
best horse in the world and names him, Greyfell in the poem, Grani in the
prose. Regin now presses him to attack Fafnir the "ling-worm," or dragon,
who guards a vast hoard of treasure in the desert. According to the saga,
Sigurd is not ashamed to own to a slight hesitation in attacking a
creature of whose size and malignity he has heard much, but in the poem he
is ready for the deed, merely hinting that "the wary foot is the surest
and the hasty oft turns back." Thereupon follows the tale of the treasure
told by Regin with great directness in the prose, and with much
circumlocution in the poem.
When Sigurd learns that Fafnir is the brother of Regin, and is keeping him
out of his share of treasure belonging to them both, on which, however, a
curse is laid, he pities Regin, and promises that if he will make him a
sword worthy of the deed he will kill Fafnir for him. This Regin attempts
to do and fails until Sigurd brings him the shards of Odin's mighty sword,
his inheritance from his father Sigmund. With a sword forged from the
shards and named by him "the Wrath," Sigurd sets out on Greyfell,
accompanied by Regin, to attack the dragon. The description in the poem of
the ride across the desert is rich in the fruits of Morris's own
experience, and reflects very closely his impressions of the mournful
place of "short-lived eagerness and glory." Sigurd and Regin ride to the
westward.
... and huge were the mountains grown
And the floor of heaven was mingled with that tossing world of stone;
And they rode till the moon was forgotten and the sun was waxen low,
And they tarried not though he perished, and the world grew dark below.
Then they rode a mighty desert, a glimmering place and wide,
And into a narrow pass high-walled on either side
By the blackness of the mountains, and barred aback and in face
By the empty night of the shadow; a windless silent place:
But the white moon shone o'erhead mid the small sharp stars and pale,
And each as a man alone they rode on the highway of bale.
So ever they wended upward, and the midnight hour was o'er,
And the stars grew pale and paler, and failed from the heaven's floor,
And the moon was a long while dead, but where was the promise of day?
No change came over the darkness, no streak of the dawning grey;
No sound of the wind's uprising adown the night there ran:
It was blind as the Gaping Gulf ere the first of the worlds began.
The fight with the dragon, the roasting of the dragon's heart, the tasting
of the blood by Sigurd, and his instant knowledge of the hearts of men and
beasts and of the speech of birds, follow with close adherence of poem to
saga, the most marked divergence being the substitution of eagles for the
woodpeckers who sing to Sigurd of his future. Through his new
accomplishment Sigurd is able to read Regin's heart, and sees therein a
traitorous intent, therefore he kills Regin, loads Greyfell with the
treasure, and rides to the mountain where Brynhild, the warrior maiden
struck with slumber by Odin in punishment for disobedience to him, is
lying in her armour guarded by flames. Sigurd wins through the fire, and
awakens her, and they hold loving converse together on the mountain,
Brynhild teaching him wisdom in runes and in the saga, bringing him beer
in a beaker, "the drink of love," although in the poem this hospitable
ceremony is omitted. After a time they part, plighting troth, and later,
when they meet at the home of Brynhild in Lymdale, they again exchange
vows of faith.
Then Sigurd rides to a realm south of the Rhine, where dwell the Niblung
brothers with their sister Gudrun and their fierce-hearted mother,
Grimhild, who brews for Sigurd a philter that makes him forget the vows he
exchanged with Brynhild and become enamoured of Gudrun. Completely under
the power of the charm, he weds the latter and undertakes to woo and win
Brynhild for her brother Gunnar. This he does by assuming Gunnar's
semblance, and riding once more through the fire that guards Brynhild,
reminding her of her oath to marry whomever should perform this feat, and
returning to his own form after gaining her promise for Gunnar. This ruse
is made known to Brynhild (after she has wedded Gunnar) by Gudrun, who is
not averse to marring the peace of the greatest of women, and Brynhild
makes the air ring with her wailing over the woeful fact that Gudrun has
the braver man for her husband. In the saga she is a very outspoken lady
and in a wild temper, and even in the poem her grief fails in noble and
dignified expression. At her instigation Sigurd is killed by Gunnar and
his brethren. The vengeance brings no happiness, however, and Brynhild
pierces her breast with a sword that she and Sigurd may lie on one funeral
pyre! Lovers of Wagner opera will remember that the story as there told
ends with this climax, but Morris carries it on to Gudrun's marriage with
King Atli, Brynhild's brother, and to the struggle between him and the
Niblungs for the fatal treasure, which results in the murder of the
Niblungs (Gudrun's brothers) and the irrevocable loss of the treasure.
Although Gudrun has approved Atli's deed, she finds she can no longer
abide with him after it has been accomplished, and accordingly sets fire
to his house and throws herself into the sea. Morris omits the grewsome
incident of the supper prepared for Atli by Gudrun from the roasted hearts
of their children whom she had killed, and also leaves out the subsequent
account of the bringing ashore of Gudrun and the wedding and slaying of
Swanhild, her daughter by Sigurd.
To the poetic and symbolic elements of this strange old saga, Morris has
been abundantly sensitive. The curse attending the desire for gold, which
is the pointed moral of the saga, is brought out, not dramatically, but
by allusions and suggestions, not always apparent at a casual reading. The
conception of Sigurd as the sun-god destroying the powers of darkness and
illuminating a shadowy world is constantly hinted at, as when he threatens
Regin with the light he sheds on good and ill, and when Regin, looking
toward him as he sits on Greyfell, sees that the light of his presence
blazes as the glory of the sun. The heroism of Sigurd, his role as the
ideal lover and warrior and spiritual saviour of his race, is perhaps
over-emphasised. As King Arthur certainly lost in interest by Tennyson's
re-creation of him, so Sigurd is more lovely and fair and golden and
glorious in the poem than in the saga, and considerably less human and
attractive withal. In fact, none of the characters in the poem--all so
intensely alive to Morris himself--lives in quite a like degree for his
readers. His power to probe beneath externals and rouse emotions of
spiritual force was curiously limited. There are indications in his
biography that his business with crafts and "word-spinning," as he called
it, served him as a kind of armour, protecting him from the wounds of
feelings too poignant to handle freely, too deadly to invite. We read of
his agony of apprehension, for example, when in Iceland he did not hear
from his home for a considerable period. "Why does not one drop down or
faint or do something of that sort when it comes to the uttermost in such
matters!" he exclaims. But in his writing it is mainly the surface of the
earth and the surface of the mind with which he deals. It is in the nature
of his genius, says one of his most accomplished critics, to dispense with
those deeper thoughts of life which for Chaucer and for Shakespeare were
"the very air breathed by the persons living in their verse."
Nevertheless, his service to English literature, in translating the
Northern sagas as none but a poet could have translated them, was very
great, and his _Story of Sigurd_ is in many respects a splendid
performance. In writing it he endeavoured to infuse into his style the
energy and passion of the literature from which he drew his material, and
to brace it with the sturdy fibre of the Icelandic tongue. His efforts to
de-Latinise his sentences had already lent his translations a vigour
lacking in his earlier work. He had captured something of the Northern
freshness corresponding very truly to his external aspect if not to the
workings of his brain. The chief defect from which his story of Sigurd
suffers lies in the extreme garrulity of the narrative. A single passage,
set by the side of the translation, will suffice to show the manner in
which a direct statement is smothered and amplified until the reader's
brain is dull with repetition, and the episode or description is extended
to three or four times its original length. Thus in the saga we are told
that after Sigurd had eaten of the dragon's heart "he leapt on his horse
and rode along the trail of the worm Fafnir, and so right unto his
abiding-place; and he found it open, and beheld all the doors and the
gear of them that they were wrought of iron; yea, and all the beams of the
house; and it was dug down deep into the earth: there found Sigurd gold
exceeding plenteous, and the sword Rotti; and thence he took the Helm of
Awe, and the Gold Byrny, and many things fair and good. So much gold he
found there, that he thought verily that scarce might two horses, or three
belike, bear it thence. So he took all the gold and laid it in two great
chests, and set them on the horse Grani, and took the reins of him, but
nowise will he stir, neither will he abide smiting. Then Sigurd knows the
mind of the horse, and leaps on the back of him, and smites spurs into
him, and off the horse goes even as if he were unladen."
From this comparatively unvarnished tale Morris evolves the following:
Now Sigurd eats of the heart that once in the Dwarf-king lay,
The hoard of the wisdom begrudged, the might of the earlier day.
Then wise of heart was he waxen, but longing in him grew
To sow the seed he had gotten, and till the field he knew.
So he leapeth aback of Greyfell, and rideth the desert bare,
And the hollow slot of Fafnir that led to the Serpent's lair.
Then long he rode adown it, and the ernes flew overhead,
And tidings great and glorious of that Treasure of old they said,
So far o'er the waste he wended, and when the night was come
He saw the earth-old dwelling, the dread Gold-wallowers home.
On the skirts of the Heath it was builded by a tumbled stony bent;
High went that house to the heavens, down 'neath the earth it went,
Of unwrought iron fashioned for the heart of a greedy king:
'Twas a mountain, blind without, and within was its plenishing
But the Hoard of Andvari the ancient, and the sleeping Curse unseen,
The Gold of the Gods that spared not and the greedy that have been.
Through the door strode Sigurd the Volsung, and the grey moon and the
sword
Fell in on the tawny gold-heaps of the ancient hapless Hoard:
Gold gear of hosts unburied, and the coin of cities dead,
Great spoil of the ages of battle, lay there on the Serpent's bed:
Huge blocks from mid-earth quarried, where none but the Dwarfs have
mined,
Wide sands of the golden rivers no foot of man may find,
Lay 'neath the spoils of the mighty and the ruddy rings of yore:
But amidst was the Helm of Aweing that the Fear of earth-folk bore,
And there gleamed a wonder beside it, the Hauberk all of gold,
Whose like is not in the heavens nor has earth of its fellow told:
There Sigurd seeth moreover Andvari's Ring of Gain,
The hope of Loki's finger, the Ransom's utmost grain;
For it shone on the midmost gold-heap like the first star set in the
sky,
In the yellow space of even when the moon-rise draweth anigh.
Then laughed the Son of Sigmund, and stooped to the golden land,
And gathered that first of the harvest and set it on his hand;
And he did on the Helm of Aweing, and the Hauberk all of gold,--
Whose like is not in the heavens nor has earth of its fellow told:
Then he praised the day of the Volsungs amid the yellow light,
And he set his hand to the labour and put forth his kingly might;
He dragged forth gold to the moon, on the desert's face he laid
The innermost earth's adornment, and rings for the nameless made;
He toiled and loaded Greyfell, and the cloudy war-steed shone,
And the gear of Sigurd rattled in the flood of moonlight wan;
There he toiled and loaded Greyfell, and the Volsung's armour rang
'Mid the yellow bed of the Serpent--but without the eagles sang:
"Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! let the gold shine free and clear!
For what hath the Son of the Volsungs the ancient Curse to fear?
"Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for thy tale is well begun,
And the world shall be good and gladdened by the Gold lit up by the sun.
"Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! and gladden all thine heart!
For the world shall make thee merry ere thou and she depart.
"Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for the ways go green below,
Go green to the dwelling of Kings, and the halls that the Queen-folk
know.
"Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for what is there bides by the way,
Save the joy of folk to awaken, and the dawn of the merry day?
"Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for the strife awaits thine hand
And a plenteous war-field's reaping, and the praise of many a land.
"Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! but how shall storehouse hold
That glory of thy winning and the tidings to be told?"
Now the moon was dead and the star-worlds were great on the heavenly
plain,
When the steed was fully laden; then Sigurd taketh the rein
And turns to the ruined rock-wall that the lair was built beneath,
For there he deemed was the gate and the door of the Glittering Heath,
But not a whit moved Greyfell for aught that the King might do;
Then Sigurd pondered awhile, till the heart of the beast he knew,
And clad in all his war-gear he leaped to the saddle-stead,
And with pride and mirth neighed Greyfell and tossed aloft his head,
And sprang unspurred o'er the waste, and light and swift he went,
And breasted the broken rampart, the stony tumbled bent;
And over the brow he clomb, and there beyond was the world,
A place of many mountains and great crags together hurled.
So down to the west he wendeth, and goeth swift and light,
And the stars are beginning to wane, and the day is mingled with night;
For full fain was the sun to arise and look on the Gold set free,
And the Dwarf-wrought rings of the Treasure and the gifts from the floor
of the sea.
Beautiful and full of poetic spirit and suggestion as this phraseology is,
a reader may be forgiven if it recalls the reply of Hamlet when asked by
Polonius what it is he reads. Compared with the swift dramatic method
employed by Wagner to make the heroes and heroines of this same saga live
for our time, it must be admitted that the latter drives home with the
greater energy and conviction. Morris himself, however, was "not much
interested" in anything Wagner did, looking upon it "as nothing short of
desecration to bring such a tremendous and world-wide subject under the
gaslights of an opera, the most rococo and degraded of all forms of art."
To the group of translations and adaptations already described must be
added one other ambitious effort which belongs to it, properly speaking,
although separated from it in time by more than ten years. In 1887 Morris
published a translation of the _Odyssey_, written in anapaestic couplets,
and rendered as literally as by the prose crib of which he made frank use.
Mr. Watts-Dunton finds in this translation the Homeric eagerness, although
the Homeric dignity is lacking. The majority of competent critics were
against it, however, nor is a high degree of classical training necessary
to perceive in it an incoherence and clumsiness of diction impossible to
associate with the lucid images of the Greeks. Compare, for example,
Morris's account of the recognition of Ulysses by Argus with Bryant's
limpid rendering of the same episode, and the tortured style of the former
is obvious at once. Bryant's translation reads:
There lay
Argus, devoured with vermin. As he saw
Ulysses drawing near, he wagged his tail
And dropped his ears, but found that he could come
No nearer to his master. Seeing this
Ulysses wiped away a tear unmark'd
By the good swineherd whom he questioned thus:
"Eumaeus, this I marvel at,--this dog
That lies upon the dunghill, beautiful
In form, but whether in the chase as fleet
As he is fairly shaped I cannot tell.
Worthless, perchance, as house-dogs often are
Whose masters keep them for the sake of show."
And thus, Eumaeus, thou didst make reply:
"The dog belongs to one who died afar.
Had he the power of limb which once he had
For feats of hunting when Ulysses sailed
For Troy and left him, thou wouldst be amazed
Both at his swiftness and his strength. No beast
In the thick forest depths which once he saw,
Or even tracked by footprints, could escape.
And now he is a sufferer, since his lord
Has perished far from his own land. No more
The careless women heed the creature's wants;
For, when the master is no longer near,
The servants cease from their appointed tasks,
And on the day that one becomes a slave
The Thunderer, Jove takes half his worth away."
He spake, and, entering that fair dwelling-place,
Passed through to where the illustrious suitors sat,
While over Argus the black night of death
Came suddenly as soon as he had seen
Ulysses, absent now for twenty years.
And here is the description by Morris of the infinitely touching scene:
There then did the woodhound Argus all full of ticks abide;
But now so soon as he noted Odysseus drawing anear
He wagged his tail, and fawning he laid down either ear,
But had no might to drag him nigher from where he lay
To his master, who beheld him and wiped a tear away
That he lightly hid from Eumaeus, unto whom he spake and said:
"Eumaeus, much I marvel at the dog on the dung-heap laid;
Fair-shapen is his body, but nought I know indeed
If unto this his fairness he hath good running speed,
Or is but like unto some--men's table-dogs I mean,
Which but because of their fairness lords cherish to be seen."
Then thou, O swineherd Eumaeus, didst speak and answer thus:
"Yea, this is the hound of the man that hath died aloof from us;
And if yet to do and to look on he were even such an one
As Odysseus left behind him when to Troy he gat him gone
Then wouldest thou wonder beholding his speed and hardihood,
For no monster that he followed through the depths of the tangled wood
Would he blench from, and well he wotted of their trail and where it
led.
But now ill he hath, since his master in an alien land is dead,
And no care of him have the women, that are heedless here and light;
Since thralls whenso they are missing their masters' rule and might.
No longer are they willing to do the thing that should be;
For Zeus, the loud-voiced, taketh half a man's valiancy
Whenso the day of thralldom hath hold of him at last."
So saying into the homestead of the happy place he passed
And straight to the hall he wended 'mid the Wooers overbold.
But the murky doom of the death-day of Argus now took hold
When he had looked on Odysseus in this the twentieth year.
The decade between the publication of _The Earthly Paradise_ and _Sigurd
the Volsung_ had been one of sustained literary effort varied, as we have
seen, but hardly interrupted by the work in decoration. The latter Morris
called his "bread-and-cheese work," the former his "pleasure work of
books." The time had not yet come for a complete union between the two,
although it was foreshadowed by the illuminated manuscripts made for
friends during these years. A selection from his own poems, a translation
of the _Eyrbyggja Saga_, a copy of Fitzgerald's _Rubaiyat of Omar
Khayyam_, and the _AEneid_ of Virgil were among the works that Morris
undertook to transcribe with his own hand on vellum, with decorative
margins with results of great beauty. He had now long been happy in work
calling out all this enthusiasm, but the world was going on without, to
use his own words, "beautiful and strange and dreadful and worshipful."
He was approaching the time when his conscience would no longer let him
rest in the thought that he was "not born to set the crooked straight."