While, when you come not, what I do I do Thinking 'Now when he comes,' my sweetest 'when': For one man is my world of all the men This wide world holds; O love, my world is you. Howbeit, to meet you grows almost a pang Because the pang of parting comes so soon; My hope hangs waning, waxing, like a moon Between the heavenly days on which we meet: Ah me, but where are now the songs I sang When life was sweet because you called them sweet? 2 I wish I could remember that first day, A day of days! I let it come and go It seemed to mean so little, meant so much; May not the darkness hide it from my face? You cannot miss that inn. Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? They will not keep you standing at that door. Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? Of labour you shall find the sum. Will there be beds for me and all who seek? Yea, beds for all who come. WILLIAM MORRIS (1834-1896) THE GILLIFLOWER OF GOLD. I wore upon my helm alway, Hah! hah! la belle jaune giroflée.1 However well Sir Giles might sit, First touch of hand in hand-Did one but Although my spear in splinters flew, know! 11 Many in aftertimes will say of you 'He loved her '-while of me what will they say? Not that I loved you more than just in play, For fashion's sake as idle women do. Even let them prate; who know not what we knew Of love and parting in exceeding pain, UP-HILL Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. From John's steel-coat, my eye was true; Yea, do not doubt my heart was good, Though my sword flew like rotten wood, To shout, although I scarcely stood, Hah! hah! la belle jaune giroflée. My hand was steady, too, to take Hah! hah! la belle jaune giroflée. When I stood in my tent again, Hah! hah! la belle jaune giroflée To hear: "Honneur aux fils des preux!"' Hah! hah! la belle jaune giroflée. The Sieur Guillaume against me came, Will the day's journey take the whole long His tabard bore three points of flame day? From morn to night, my friend. But is there for the night a resting-place? From a red heart; with little blame Hah! hah! la belle jaune giroflie— 1 "Hah! hah! the beautiful yellow gilliflower !" 2 "Honor to the sons of the brave!" 3 hurt 8 16 24 32 THE BLUE CLOSET.* The Damozels. Lady Alice, lady Louise, And ever the great bell overhead Boomed in the wind a knell for the dead, Though no one tolled it, a knell for the dead. Lady Louise. Sister, let the measure swell Not too loud; for you sing not well If you drown the faint boom of the bell; And ever the chevron2 overhead Alice the Queen, and Louise the Queen, To break the locks of the doors below, If we dared, in singing; for dream on dream, They float on in a happy stream; Float from the gold strings, float from the keys, Float from the opened lips of Louise; They Sing All Together How long ago was it, how long ago, 30 He came to this tower with hands full of snow? 1 "Praise ye, youths." The beginning of the socalled Irish version of the familiar hymn, Te Deum Laudamus. 2 A V-shaped device. *Written for a picture (a water-color) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The romantic theme, the mediaeval remoteness, the color and sound. the sharpness of detall with the vagueness of general outline and setting, are all in the early Pre-Raphaelite manner. See Eng. Lit., pp. 370, 374. And ever the great bell overhead, And the tumbling seas mourned for the dead; For their song ceased, and they were dead! FROM THE EARTHLY PARADISE Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing, But rather, when aweary of your mirth, -Remember me a little then I pray, 7 days 14 These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover. FROM SIGURD THE VOLSUNG* OF THE PASSING AWAY OF BRYNHILD Once more on the morrow-morning fair shineth the glorious sun, And the Niblung children labour on a deed that shall be done; Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, For out in the people's meadows they raise a Folk say, a wizard to a northern king At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show, That through one window men beheld the spring, And through another saw the summer glow, So with this Earthly Paradise it is, 1 According to Greek legend, false dreams come through the gate of ivory, true dreams through the gate of horn. bale2 on high, The oak and the ash together, and thereon shall the Mighty lie; *The Volsunga Saga is an older, Norse version of the legend which appears in German literature as the Nibelungenlied, and which has been made familiar in modern times by Wagner's opera Der Ring des Nibelungen. It is the great Teutonic race epic. Sigurd (Siegfried, in the German version) is the grandson of Volsung, who was a descendant of Odin. Brynhild was originally a Valkyrie, one of Odin's "Choosers of the Slain," maidens who rode on white cloud-horses and visited battle-fields to select heroes for Odin's great hall, Valhalla. Sigurd wakened Brynhild from an enchanted sleep to the doom of mortal life and love, and they plighted troth. But their love was thwarted at the court of the Niblung princes, Gunnar, Hogni, and Guttorm, and their sister Gudrun, the children of Giuki. Through the witchcraft of Grimhild, Gudrun's mother, Sigurd is made to lose all memory of Brynhild and to marry Gudrun. Moreover, he is made to assist in bringing about the marriage of Brynhild to Gunnar. Later, as a result of rivalry, Guttorm surprises and slays Sigurd, but is himself slain by Sigurd's sword, the "Wrath." Then follows the portion of the tale here given the pathetic story of the means taken by Brynhild to rejoin Sigurd. Morris's metrical rendering of the entire legend extends to about ten thousand lines. 2 funeral pile |