William Morris

William Morris Poems

Love gives every gift whereby we long to live
"Love takes every gift, and nothing back doth give."
...

LOVE is enough: though the World be a-waning,
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,
   Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover
The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,
...

Wearily, drearily,
Half the day long,
Flap the great banners
High over the stone;
...

So swift the hours are moving
Unto the time unproved:
Farewell my love unloving,
Farewell my love beloved!
...

7.

am the handmaid of the earth,
I broider fair her glorious gown,
And deck her on her days of mirth
With many a garland of renown.
...

Through thick Arcadian woods a hunter went,
Following the beasts upon a fresh spring day;
But since his horn-tipped bow but seldom bent,
Now at the noontide nought had happed to slay,
...

What cometh here from west to east awending?
And who are these, the marchers stern and slow?
We bear the message that the rich are sending
Aback to those who bade them wake and know.
...

Lo from our loitering ship a new land at last to be seen;
Toothed rocks down the side of the firth on the east guard a weary wide lea,
And black slope the hillsides above, striped adown with their desolate green:
And a peak rises up on the west from the meeting of cloud and of sea,
...

Wearily, drearily,
Half the day long,
Flap the great banners
High over the stone;
...

Sad-Eyed and soft and grey thou art, o morn!
Across the long grass of the marshy plain
Thy west wind whispers of the coming rain,
Thy lark forgets that May is grown forlorn
...

The wind's on the wold
And the night is a-cold,
And Thames runs chill
'Twixt mead and hill.
...

In Arthur's house whileome was I
When happily the time went by
In midmost glory of his days.
He held his court then in a place
...

Pray but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips,
Think but one thought of me up in the stars.
The summer night waneth, the morning light slips,
Faint and grey 'twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the cloud-bars
...

For many, many days together
The wind blew steady from the East;
For many days hot grew the weather,
About the time of our Lady's Feast.
...

19.

Slayer of the winter, art thou here again?
O welcome, thou that's bring'st the summer nigh!
The bitter wind makes not thy victory vain,
Nor will we mock thee for thy faint blue sky.
...

Hear a word, a word in season,
for the day is drawing nigh,
When the Cause shall call upon us,
some to live, and some to die!
...

William Morris Biography

William Morris was born in Essex and educated at Exeter College, Oxford. He was the founding editor of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (1856) in which many of his early poems appear. He was a practising painter (1857-62) and public lecturer on art, architecture and socialism (1877-96). He founded the Kelmscott Press, Hammersmith, in 1890 and was a founding member the same year of the Hammersmith Socialist Society. He helped found the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (1877) which he served as secretary. His designs in things like furniture and fabrics contributed to the Arts and Crafts Movement and changed Victorian taste. He was president of the Birmingham Society of Arts and master of the Art Workers Guild. He found time to produce literary works and early influences on him included the Pre-Raphaelites, Ruskin, Carlyle and Rosetti. He declined a position as a poetry professor at Oxford. A social and moral critic, he gave his first public lecture in 1887 and formed the Socialist league. He died, worn out by his various activities, and was buried at Kelmscott.)

The Best Poem Of William Morris

Day

I am Day; I bring again
Life and glory, Love and pain:
Awake, arise! from death to death
Through me the World's tale quickeneth.

William Morris Comments

Linda Storey 02 December 2017

Has a line I the poem , every man dies but not every man lives

3 1 Reply
Jenny Harvey 10 December 2009

Is this peom about incest? I'm annalysing it for my A2 English and I don't want to put something which might not be right. jenny x

12 20 Reply
Frank Green 08 November 2008

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, the greatest aesthete since Aristotle and Plato, says that Morris is the only modern poet that Plato would heartily approve.

6 19 Reply

William Morris Quotes

The reward of labour is life. Is that not enough?

If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

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