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    Quote Originally Posted by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot View Post
    THANKS AMIGO...
    I know that song like I know the back of my hand my friend. Neil Young is one of my favorite singers.
    That song with me comes in second after his, 1. Heart of Gold song,
    WITH HIS SONG, 3. The Needle And The Damage Done ,coming in as third..

    And true, he is without any doubt a true and great poet..
    Songs the way he writes them are actually, lyrical poetry!--Tyr




    NEIL YOUNG LYRICS

    "Old Man"

    Old man look at my life,
    I'm a lot like you were.
    Old man look at my life,
    I'm a lot like you were.

    Old man look at my life,
    Twenty four
    and there's so much more
    Live alone in a paradise
    That makes me think of two.

    Love lost, such a cost,
    Give me things
    that don't get lost.
    Like a coin that won't get tossed
    Rolling home to you.

    Old man take a look at my life
    I'm a lot like you
    I need someone to love me
    the whole day through
    Ah, one look in my eyes
    and you can tell that's true.

    Lullabies, look in your eyes,
    Run around the same old town.
    Doesn't mean that much to me
    To mean that much to you.

    I've been first and last
    Look at how the time goes past.
    But I'm all alone at last.
    Rolling home to you.

    Old man take a look at my life
    I'm a lot like you
    I need someone to love me
    the whole day through
    Ah, one look in my eyes
    and you can tell that's true.

    Old man look at my life,
    I'm a lot like you were.
    Old man look at my life,
    I'm a lot like you were.

    --------------------------------------
    --------------------------------------


    "Harvest" Album Lyrics


    Neil Young
    Tracklist
    01 Out On The Weekend lyrics
    02 Harvest lyrics
    03 A Man Needs A Maid lyrics
    04
    4.9/5
    Heart Of Gold lyrics
    05 Are You Ready For The Country lyrics
    06
    4,915 4.9/5
    Old Man lyrics
    07 There's A World lyrics
    08 Alabama lyrics
    09
    4.7/5
    The Needle And The Damage Done lyrics
    10 Words lyrics
    This album was submitted on September 13th, 2005 and last modified on February 9th, 2013.
    Album Details
    Released : 1972-00-00
    Discs : 1
    Genre : Rock, Ethnic/Folk, Christian, Classical
    Record label :
    Rank : 785 (−673)
    Rate :
    4.3/5 from 7 users
    Charts : − view all »
    Referring urls : view all »

    --------------------------------------



    NEIL YOUNG LYRICS
    "Heart Of Gold"

    I want to live,
    I want to give
    I've been a miner for a heart of gold.
    It's these expressions
    I never give
    That keep me searching for a heart of gold.

    And I'm getting old.
    Keep me searching for a heart of gold
    And I'm getting old.

    I've been to Hollywood
    I've been to Redwood
    I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold.
    I've been in my mind,
    It's such a fine line
    That keeps me searching for a heart of gold.

    And I'm getting old.
    Keeps me searching for a heart of gold
    And I'm getting old.

    Keep me searching for a heart of gold.
    You keep me searching and I'm growing old.
    Keep me searching for a heart of gold
    I've been a miner for a heart of gold.

    ------------------------------------



    NEIL YOUNG LYRICS
    "Needle And The Damage Done"

    I caught you knockin'
    at my cellar door
    I love you, baby,
    can I have some more
    Ooh, ooh, the damage done.

    I hit the city and
    I lost my band
    I watched the needle
    take another man
    Gone, gone, the damage done.

    I sing the song
    because I love the man
    I know that some
    of you don't understand
    Milk-blood
    to keep from running out.

    I've seen the needle
    and the damage done
    A little part of it in everyone
    But every junkie's
    like a settin' sun.
    People don't read the lyrics. They listen to the tunes. Not the words.
    “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Edumnd Burke

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gunny View Post
    People don't read the lyrics. They listen to the tunes. Not the words.
    They listen to the tunes. Not the words.
    That is the greater appeal in music/songs over that of pure poetry.

    In Poetry one should/must read the words to get the message, the author's intent and purpose in writing.
    ONE MUST ANALYZE DEEPER TO FIND THE ENJOYMENT, THE PURITY AND THE SOUL OF THE ART....
    I love music in its many forms((with ffing dumb-ass rap being the prime exception)...
    I love even deeper Poetry, as to me, its more pure and often far, far deeper in its message, heart and soul..

    Note- I make no criticism of those that care not for Poetry, as I have too older brothers -both very intelligent, that think its junk! - -Tyr
    Last edited by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot; 03-12-2017 at 10:57 AM.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot View Post
    That is the greater appeal in music/songs over that of pure poetry.

    In Poetry one should/must read the words to get the message, the author's intent and purpose in writing.
    ONE MUST ANALYZE DEEPER TO FINE THE ENJOYMENT, THE PURITY AND THE SOUL OF THE ART....
    I love music in its many forms((with ffing dumb-ass rap being the prime the exception)...
    I love even deeper Poetry, as to me, its more pure and often far, far deeper in its message, heart and soul..

    Note- I make no criticism of those that care not for Poetry, as I have too older brothers -both very intelligent, that think its junk! - -Tyr
    I listen to to the words. They mean things. Both sides now is one of my favorite songs. The words don't men anything when people don't listen to them. Sound of Silence by S&G comes to mind. Thorough the naked light I saw ... 10000 people who aren't speaking. 10,000 people who aren't listening. But my words like silent raindrops fell ...

    And I do know the actual lyrics. Can play it on guitar. Just cutting to the meaning of the chase.
    “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Edumnd Burke

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gunny View Post
    I listen to to the words. They mean things. Both sides now is one of my favorite songs. The words don't men anything when people don't listen to them. Sound of Silence by S&G comes to mind. Thorough the naked light I saw ... 10000 people who aren't speaking. 10,000 people who aren't listening. But my words like silent raindrops fell ...

    And I do know the actual lyrics. Can play it on guitar. Just cutting to the meaning of the chase.
    People that have true heart, higher intelligence actually listen to the lyrics(in order to get the message and soul of the song) and not just the music and rhythm accompany the song..
    As to playing musical instruments-
    Alas, although I can write poetry, I can only play a mean jukebox(ESPECIALLY ONE LOADED WITH SOUTHERN ROCK)..--TYR
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    William Morris
    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    For other people named William Morris, see William Morris (disambiguation).
    William Morris
    William Morris age 53.jpg
    William Morris by Frederick Hollyer, 1887
    Born 24 March 1834
    Walthamstow, Essex, England
    Died 3 October 1896 (aged 62)
    Hammersmith, Middlesex, England
    Occupation Artist, designer, writer, socialist
    Known for Wallpaper and textile design, fantasy fiction / medievalism, socialism
    Notable work News from Nowhere, The Well at the World's End

    William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and socialist activist. Associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement, he was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts and methods of production. His literary contributions helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, while he played a significant role in propagating the early socialist movement in Britain.

    Born in Walthamstow, Essex, to a wealthy middle-class family, Morris came under the strong influence of medievalism while studying Classics at Oxford University, there joining the Birmingham Set. After university he trained as an architect, married Jane Burden, and developed close friendships with the Pre-Raphaelite artists Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and with the Neo-Gothic architect Philip Webb. Webb and Morris designed a family home, Red House, then in Kent, where the latter lived from 1859 to 1865, before moving to Bloomsbury, central London. In 1861, Morris founded a decorative arts firm with Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Webb, and others: the Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. Becoming highly fashionable and much in demand, the firm profoundly influenced interior decoration throughout the Victorian period, with Morris designing tapestries, wallpaper, fabrics, furniture, and stained glass windows. In 1875, Morris assumed total control of the company, which was renamed Morris & Co.

    Although retaining a main home in London, from 1871 Morris rented the rural retreat of Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire. Greatly influenced by visits to Iceland, with Eiríkr Magnússon he produced a series of English-language translations of Icelandic Sagas. He also achieved success with the publication of his epic poems and novels, namely The Earthly Paradise (1868–1870), A Dream of John Ball (1888), the utopian News from Nowhere (1890), and the fantasy romance The Well at the World's End (1896). In 1877 he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings to campaign against the damage caused by architectural restoration. Embracing Marxism and influenced by anarchism, in the 1880s Morris became a committed revolutionary socialist activist; after an involvement in the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), he founded the Socialist League in 1884, but broke with that organization in 1890. In 1891 he founded the Kelmscott Press to publish limited-edition, illuminated-style print books, a cause to which he devoted his final years.

    Morris is recognised as one of the most significant cultural figures of Victorian Britain; though best known in his lifetime as a poet, he posthumously became better known for his designs. Founded in 1955, the William Morris Society is devoted to his legacy, while multiple biographies and studies of his work have seen publication. Many of the buildings associated with his life are open to visitors, much of his work can be found in art galleries and museums, and his designs are still in production.

    Early life
    Youth: 1834–52

    Morris was born at Elm House in Walthamstow, Essex, on 24 March 1834.[1] Raised into a wealthy middle-class family, he was named after his father, a financier who worked as a partner in the Sanderson & Co. firm, bill brokers in the City of London.[2] His mother was Emma Morris (née Shelton), who descended from a Woodford, Essex, which was surrounded by 50 acres of land adjacent to Epping Forest.[3] He took an interest in fishing with his brothers as well as gardening in the Hall's grounds,[4] and spent much time exploring the Forest, where he was fascinated both by the Iron Age earthworks at Loughton Camp and Ambresbury Banks and by the Early Modern Hunting Lodge at Chingford.[5] He also took rides through the Essex countryside on his pony,[6] and visited the various churches and cathedrals throughout the country, marveling at their architecture.[7] His father took him on visits outside of the county, for instance to Canterbury Cathedral, the Chiswick Horticultural Gardens, and to the Isle of Wight, where he adored Blackgang Chine.[8] Aged 9, he was then sent to Misses Arundale's Academy for Young Gentlemen, a nearby preparatory school; although initially riding there by pony each day, he later began boarding, intensely disliking the experience.[9]

    In 1847, Morris's father died unexpectedly. From this point, the family relied upon continued income from the copper mines at Devon Great Consols, and sold Woodford Hall to move into the smaller Water House.[10] In February 1848 Morris began his studies at Marlborough College in Marlborough, Wiltshire, where he gained a reputation as an eccentric nicknamed "Crab". He despised his time there, being bullied, bored, and homesick.[11] He did use the opportunity to visit many of the prehistoric sites of Wiltshire, such as Avebury and Silbury Hill, which fascinated him.[12] The school was Anglican in faith and in March 1849 Morris was confirmed by the Bishop of Salisbury in the college chapel, developing an enthusiastic attraction towards the Anglo-Catholic movement and its Romanticist aesthetic.[13] At Christmas 1851, Morris was removed from the school and returned to Water House, where he was privately tutored by the Reverend Frederick B. Guy, Assistant Master at the nearby Forest School.[14]
    Oxford and the Birmingham Set: 1852–56

    In June 1852 Morris entered Oxford University's Exeter College, although since the college was full, he only went into residence in January 1853.[15] He disliked the college and was bored by the manner in which they taught him Classics.[16] Instead he developed a keen interest in Medieval history and Medieval architecture, inspired by the many Medieval buildings in Oxford.[17] This interest was tied to Britain's growing Medievalist movement, a form of Romanticism that rejected many of the values of Victorian industrial capitalism.[18] For Morris, the Middle Ages represented an era with strong chivalric values and an organic, pre-capitalist sense of community, both of which he deemed preferable to his own period.[19] This attitude was compounded by his reading of Thomas Carlyle's book Past and Present (1843), in which Carlyle championed Medieval values as a corrective to the problems of Victorian society.[20] Under this influence, Morris's dislike of contemporary capitalism grew, and he came to be influenced by the work of Christian socialists Charles Kingsley and Frederick Denison Maurice.[21]

    At the college, Morris met fellow first-year undergraduate Edward Burne-Jones, who became his lifelong friend and collaborator. Although from very different backgrounds, they found that they had a shared attitude to life, both being keenly interested in Anglo-Catholicism and Arthurianism.[22] Through Burne-Jones, Morris joined a group of undergraduates from Birmingham who were studying at Pembroke College: William Fulford, Richard Watson Dixon, Charles Faulkner, and Cormell Price. They were known among themselves as the "Brotherhood" and to historians as the Birmingham Set.[23] Morris was the most affluent member of the Set, and was generous with his wealth toward the others.[24] Like Morris, the Set were fans of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and would meet together to recite the plays of William Shakespeare.[25]
    William Morris self-portrait, 1856; Morris grew his beard that year, after leaving university.[26]

    Morris was heavily influenced by the writings of the art critic John Ruskin, being particularly inspired by his chapter "On the Nature of Gothic Architecture" in the second volume of The Stones of Venice; he later described it as "one of the very few necessary and inevitable utterances of the century".[27] Morris adopted Ruskin's philosophy of rejecting the tawdry industrial manufacture of decorative arts and architecture in favour of a return to hand-craftsmanship, raising artisans to the status of artists, creating art that should be affordable and hand-made, with no hierarchy of artistic mediums.[28][29] Ruskin had achieved attention in Victorian society for championing the art of a group of painters who had emerged in London in 1848 calling themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The Pre-Raphaelite style was heavily Medievalist and Romanticist, emphasising abundant detail, intense colours and complex compositions; it greatly impressed Morris and the Set.[30] Influenced both by Ruskin and by John Keats, Morris began to spend more time writing poetry, in a style that was imitative of much of theirs.[31]

    Both he and Burne-Jones were influenced by the Romanticist milieu and the Anglo-Catholic movement, and decided to become clergymen in order to found a monastery where they could live a life of chastity and dedication to artistic pursuit, akin to that of the contemporary Nazarene movement. However, as time went on Morris became increasingly critical of Anglican doctrine and the idea faded.[32] In summer 1854, Morris travelled to Belgium to look at Medieval paintings,[33] and in July 1855 went with Burne-Jones and Fulford across northern France, visiting Medieval churches and cathedrals.[34] It was on this trip that he and Burne-Jones committed themselves to "a life of art".[35] For Morris, this decision resulted in a strained relationship with his family, who believed that he should have entered either commerce or the clergy.[36] On a subsequent visit to Birmingham, Morris discovered Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which became a core Arthurian text for him and Burne-Jones.[37] In January 1856, the Set began publication of The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, designed to contain "mainly Tales, Poetry, friendly critiques and social articles". Mainly funded by Morris, who briefly served as editor and heavily contributed to it with his own stories, poems, reviews and articles, the magazine lasted for twelve issues, and garnered praise from Tennyson and Ruskin.[38]
    Apprenticeship, the Pre-Raphaelites, and marriage: 1856–59
    Morris's painting La belle Iseult, also inaccurately called Queen Guinevere, is his only surviving easel painting, now in the Tate Gallery, 1858.

    Having passed his finals and been awarded a BA, Morris began an apprenticeship with the Oxford-based Neo-Gothic architect George Edmund Street in January 1856. His apprenticeship focused on architectural drawing, and there he was placed under the supervision of the young architect Philip Webb, who became a close friend.[39] Morris soon relocated to Street's London office, in August 1856 moving into a flat in Bloomsbury, Central London with Burne-Jones, an area perhaps chosen for its avant-garde associations.[40] Morris was fascinated by London but dismayed at its pollution and rapid expansion into neighbouring countryside, describing it as "the spreading sore".[41]

    Morris became increasingly fascinated with the idyllic Medievalist depictions of rural life which appeared in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, and spent large sums of money purchasing such artworks. Burne-Jones shared this interest, but took it further by becoming an apprentice to one of the foremost Pre-Raphaelite painters, Dante Gabriel Rossetti; the three soon became close friends.[42] Through Rossetti, Morris came to associate with poet Robert Browning, and the artists Arthur Hughes, Thomas Woolner, and Ford Madox Brown.[43] Tired of architecture, Morris abandoned his apprenticeship, with Rossetti persuading him to take up painting instead, which he chose to do in the Pre-Raphaelite style.[44] Morris aided Rossetti and Burne-Jones in painting the Arthurian murals at Oxford Union, although his contributions were widely deemed inferior and unskilled compared to those of the others.[45] At Rossetti's recommendation, Morris and Burne-Jones moved in together to the flat at Bloomsbury's No. 17 Red Lion Square by November 1856. Morris designed and commissioned furniture for the flat in a Medieval style, much of which he painted with Arthurian scenes in a direct rejection of mainstream artistic tastes.[46]

    Morris also continued writing poetry and began designing illuminated manuscripts and embroidered hangings.[47] In March 1857, Bell and Dandy published a book of Morris's poems, The Defence of Guenevere, which was largely self-funded by the author himself. It did not sell well and garnered few reviews, most of which were unsympathetic. Disconcerted, Morris would not publish again for a further eight years.[48] In October 1857 Morris met Jane Burden, a woman from a poor working-class background, at a theatre performance and asked her to model for him. Smitten with her, they entered into a relationship and were engaged in spring 1858; Burden would later admit however that she never loved Morris.[49] They were married in a low-key ceremony held at St Michael at the North Gate church in Oxford on 26 April 1859, before honeymooning in Bruges, Belgium, and settling temporarily at 41 Great Ormond Street, London.[50]
    Career and fame
    Red House and the Firm: 1859–65
    Red House in Bexleyheath; it is now owned by The National Trust and open to visitors

    Morris desired a new home for himself and his wife, resulting in the construction of the Red House in the Kentish hamlet of Upton near Bexleyheath, ten miles from central London. The building's design was a co-operative effort, with Morris focusing on the interiors and the exterior being designed by Webb, for whom the House represented his first commission as an independent architect.[51] Named after the red bricks and red tiles from which it was constructed, Red House rejected architectural norms by being L-shaped.[52] Influenced by various forms of contemporary Neo-Gothic architecture, the House was nevertheless unique,[53] with Morris describing it as "very mediaeval in spirit".[54] Situated within an orchard, the house and garden were intricately linked in their design.[55] It took a year to construct,[56] and cost Morris £4000 at a time when his fortune was greatly reduced by a dramatic fall in the price of his shares.[57] Burne-Jones described it as "the beautifullest place on Earth."[58]

    After construction, Morris invited friends to visit, most notably Burne-Jones and his wife Georgiana, as well as Rossetti and his wife Lizzie Siddal.[59] They aided him in painting murals on the furniture, walls, and ceilings, much of it based on Arthurian tales, the Trojan War, and Geoffrey Chaucer's stories, while he also designed floral embroideries for the rooms.[60] They also spent much time playing tricks on each other, enjoying games like hide and seek, and singing while accompanied by the piano.[61] Siddall stayed at the House during summer and autumn 1861 as she recovered from a traumatic miscarriage and an addiction to laudanum; she would die of an overdose in February 1862.[62]

    In April 1861, Morris founded a decorative arts company, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., with six other partners: Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Webb, Ford Madox Brown, Charles Faulkner, and Peter Paul Marshall. Operating from premises at No. 6 Red Lion Square, they referred to themselves as "the Firm" and were intent on adopting Ruskin's ideas of reforming British attitudes to production. They hoped to reinstate decoration as one of the fine arts and adopted an ethos of affordability and anti-elitism.[63] For additional staff, they employed boys from the Industrial Home for Destitute Boys in Euston, central London, many of whom were trained as apprentices.[64]

    Although working within the Neo-Gothic school of design, they differed from Neo-Gothic architects like Gilbert Scott who simply included certain Gothic features on modern styles of building; instead they sought to return completely to Medieval Gothic methods of craftmanship.[65] The products created by the Firm included furniture, architectural carving, metalwork, stained glass windows, and murals.[66] Their stained glass windows proved a particular success in the firm's early years as they were in high demand for the surge in the Neo-Gothic construction and refurbishment of churches, many of which were commissioned by the architect George Frederick Bodley.[67] Despite Morris's anti-elitist ethos, the Firm soon became increasingly popular and fashionable with the bourgeoisie, particularly following their exhibit at the 1862 International Exhibition in South Kensington, where they received press attention and medals of commendation.[68] However, they faced much opposition from established design companies, particularly those belonging to the Neo-Classical school.[69]
    Design for Trellis wallpaper, 1862

    Morris was slowly abandoning painting, recognising that his work lacked a sense of movement; none of his paintings are dated later than 1862.[70] Instead he focused his energies on designing wallpaper patterns, the first being "Trellis", designed in 1862. His designs would be produced from 1864 by Jeffrey and Co. of Islington, who created them for the Firm under Morris's supervision.[71] Morris also retained an active interest in various groups, joining the Hogarth Club, the Mediaeval Society, and the Corps of Artist Volunteers, the latter being in contrast to his later pacifism.[72]

    Meanwhile, Morris's family continued to grow. In January 1861, Morris and Janey's first daughter was born: named Jane Alice Morris, she was commonly known as "Jenny".[73] Jenny was followed in March 1862 by the birth of their second daughter, Mary "May" Morris.[74] Morris was a caring father to his daughters, and years later they both recounted having idyllic childhoods.[75] However, there were problems in Morris's marriage as Janey became increasingly close to Rossetti, who often painted her. It is unknown if their affair was ever sexual, although by this point other members of the group were noticing Rossetti and Janey's closeness.[76]

    Imagining the creation of an artistic community at Upton, Morris helped develop plans for a second house to be constructed adjacent to Red House in which Burne-Jones could live with his family; the plans were abandoned when Burne-Jones' son Philip died from scarlet fever.[77] By 1864, Morris had become increasingly tired of life at Red House, being particularly unhappy with the 3 to 4 hours spent commuting to his London workplace on a daily basis.[78] He sold Red House, and in autumn 1865 moved with his family to No. 26 Queen Square in Bloomsbury, the same building that the Firm moved its base of operations to earlier in the summer.[79]
    Queen Square and The Earthly Paradise: 1865–70
    Portrait of William Morris by George Frederic Watts, 1870.

    At Queen Square, the Morris family lived in a flat directly above the Firm's shop.[80] They were joined by Janey's sister Bessie Burton and a number of household servants.[81] Meanwhile, changes were afoot at the Firm as Faulkner left, and to replace him they employed a business manager, Warrington Taylor, who would remain with them till 1866. Taylor pulled the Firm's finances into order and spent much time controlling Morris and ensuring that he worked to schedule.[82] During these years the Firm carried out a number of high-profile designs; from September 1866 to January 1867, they redecorated the Armoury and Tapestry Room in St. James' Palace,[83] in the latter year also designing the Green Dining Room at the South Kensington Museum (it is now the Morris Room at the Victoria and Albert Museum).[84] The Firm's work received increasing interest from people in the United States, resulting in Morris's acquaintance with Henry James and Charles Eliot Norton.[85] However, despite its success, the Firm was not turning over a large net profit, and this, coupled with the decreasing value of Morris' stocks, meant that he had to decrease his spending.[86]

    Janey's relationship with Rossetti had continued, and by the late 1860s gossip regarding their affair had spread about London, where they were regularly seen spending time together.[87] Morris biographer Fiona MacCarthy argued that it was likely that Morris had learned of and accepted the existence of their affair by 1870.[88] In this year he developed an affectionate friendship with Aglaia Coronie, the daughter of wealthy Greek refugees, although there is no evidence that they had an affair.[89] Meanwhile, Morris's relationship with his mother had improved, and he would regularly take his wife and children to visit her at her house in Leyton.[90] He also went on various holidays; in the summer of 1866 he, Webb, and Taylor toured the churches of northern France.[91]
    A caricature sketch of Morris by Rossetti, "The Bard and Petty Tradesman", reflecting his behaviour at the Firm

    In August 1866 Morris joined the Burne-Jones family on their holiday in Lymington, while in August 1867 both families holidayed together in Oxford.[92] In August 1867 the Morrises holidayed in Southwold, Suffolk,[93] while in the summer of 1869 Morris took his wife to Bad Ems in Rhineland-Palatinate, central Germany, where it was hoped that the local health waters would aid her ailments. While there, he enjoyed walks in the countryside and focused on writing poetry.[94]

    Morris had continued to devote much time to writing poetry. In 1867 Bell and Dandy published Morris's epic poem, The Life and Death of Jason, at his own expense. The book was a retelling of the ancient Greek myth of the hero Jason and his quest to find the Golden Fleece. In contrast to Morris's former publication, The Life and Death of Jason was well received, resulting in the publishers paying Morris a fee for the second edition.[95] From 1865 to 1870, Morris worked on another epic poem, The Earthly Paradise. Designed as a homage to Chaucer, it consisted of 24 stories, adopted from an array of different cultures, and each by a different narrator; set in the late 14th century, the synopsis revolved around a group of Norsemen who flee the Black Death by sailing away from Europe, on the way discovering an island where the inhabitants continue to venerate the ancient Greek gods. Published in four parts by F. S. Ellis, it soon gained a cult following and established Morris' reputation as a major poet.[96]
    Kelmscott Manor and Iceland: 1870–75
    Main Entrance to Kelmscott Manor

    By 1870, Morris had become a public figure in Britain, resulting in repeated press requests for photographs, which he despised.[97] That year, he also reluctantly agreed to sit for a portrait by establishment painter George Frederic Watts.[98] Morris was keenly interested in Icelandic literature, having befriended the Icelandic theologian Eiríkr Magnússon. Together they produced prose translations of the Eddas and Sagas for publication in English.[99] Morris also developed a keen interest in creating hand-written illuminated manuscripts, producing 18 such books between 1870 and 1875, the first of which was A Book of Verse, completed as a birthday present for Georgina Burne-Jones. 12 of these 18 were handwritten copies of Nordic tales such as Halfdan the Black, Frithiof the Bold, and The Dwellers of Eyr. Morris deemed calligraphy to be an art form, and taught himself both Roman and italic script, as well as learning how to produce gilded letters.[100] In November 1872 he published Love is Enough, a poetic drama based on a story in the Medieval Welsh text, the Mabinogion. Illustrated with Burne-Jones woodcuts, it was not a popular success.[101] By 1871, he had begun work on a novel set in the present, The Novel on Blue Paper, which was about a love triangle; it would remain unfinished and Morris later asserted that it was not well written.[102]

    By early summer 1871, Morris began to search for a house outside London where his children could spend time away from the city's pollution. He settled on Kelmscott Manor in the village of Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, obtaining a joint tenancy on the building with Rossetti in June.[103] Morris adored the building, which was constructed circa 1570, and would spend much time in the local countryside.[104] Conversely, Rossetti would be unhappy at Kelmscott, and eventually suffered a mental breakdown.[105] Morris divided his time between London and Kelmscott, however when Rossetti was there he would not spend more than three days at a time at the latter.[106] He was also fed up with his family home in Queen Square, deciding to obtain a new house in London. Although retaining a personal bedroom and study at Queen Square, he relocated his family to Horrington House in Turnham Green Road, West London, in January 1873.[107] This allowed him to be far closer to the home of Burne-Jones, with the duo meeting on almost every Sunday morning for the rest of Morris' life.[108]
    Morris' Acanthus wallpaper design, (1875, left) and a page from Morris' illuminated manuscript of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, illustrated by Edward Burne-Jones

    Leaving Jane and his children with Rossetti at Kelmscott, in July 1871 Morris left for Iceland with Faulkner, W.H. Evans, and Magnússon. Sailing from the Scottish port of Granton aboard a Danish mail boat, they proceeded to the island via Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands before arriving at Reykjavik, where they disembarked. There they met the President of the Althing, Jón Sigurðsson, with Morris being sympathetic to the Icelandic independence movement. From there, they proceeded by Icelandic horse along the south coast to Bergþórshvoll, Thórsmörk, Geysir, Þingvellir, and then back to Reyjkavik, where they departed back to Britain in September.[109] In April 1873, Morris and Burne-Jones holidayed in Italy, visiting Florence and Siena. Although generally disliking the country, Morris was interested in the Florentine Gothic architecture.[110] Soon after, in July, Morris returned to Iceland, revisiting many of the sites he had previously seen, but then proceeding north to Varna glacier and Fljótsdalur.[111] His two visits to the country profoundly influenced him, in particular in his growing leftist opinions; he would comment that these trips made him realise that "the most grinding poverty is a trifling evil compared with the inequality of classes."[112]

    Morris and Burne-Jones then spent time with one of the Firm's patrons, the wealthy George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle and his wife Rosalind, at their Medieval home in Naworth Castle, Cumberland.[113] In July 1874, the Morris family then took Burne-Jones' two children with them on their holiday to Bruges, Belgium.[114] However, by this point Morris' friendship with Rossetti had seriously eroded, and in July 1874 their acrimonious falling out led Rossetti to leave Kelmscott, with Morris' publisher F.S. Ellis taking his place.[115] With the company's other partners drifting off to work on other projects, Morris decided to consolidate his own control of the Firm and become sole proprietor and manager. In March 1875, he paid £1000 each in compensation to Rossetti, Brown, and Marshall, although the other partners waived their claims to financial compensation. That month, the Firm was officially disbanded and replaced by Morris & Co, although Burne-Jones and Webb would continue to produce designs for it in future.[116] This accomplished, he resigned his directorship of the Devon Great Consols, selling his remaining shares in the company.[117]
    Textile experimentation and political embrace: 1875–80
    Two of Morris' designs: Snakeshead printed textile (1876) and "Peacock and Dragon" woven wool furnishing fabric (1878)

    Now in complete control of the Firm, Morris took an increased interest in the process of textile dyeing and entered into a co-operative agreement with Thomas Wardle, a silk dyer who operated the Hencroft Works in Leek, Staffordshire. As a result, Morris would spend time with Wardle at his home on various occasions between summer 1875 and spring 1878.[118] Deeming the colours to be of inferior quality, Morris rejected the chemical aniline dyes which were then predominant, instead emphasising the revival of organic dyes, such as indigo for blue, walnut shells and roots for brown, and cochineal, kermes, and madder for red.[119] Living and working in this industrial environment, he gained a personal understanding of production and the lives of the proletariat, and was disgusted by the poor living conditions of workers and the pollution caused by industry; these factors greatly influenced his political views.[120] After learning the skills of dyeing, in the late 1870s Morris turned his attention to weaving, experimenting with silk weaving at Queen's Square.[121]

    In the Spring of 1877, the Firm opened a store at No. 449 Oxford Street and obtained new staff who were able to improve its professionalism; as a result, sales increased and its popularity grew.[122] By 1880, Morris & Co. had become a household name, having become very popular with Britain's upper and middle classes.[123] The Firm was obtaining increasing numbers of commissions from aristocrats, wealthy industralists, and provincial entrepreneurs, with Morris furnishing parts of St. James' Palace and the chapel at Eaton Hall.[124] As a result of his growing sympathy for the working-classes and poor, Morris felt personally conflicted in serving the interests of these individuals, privately describing it as "ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich".[123]

    Continuing with his literary output, Morris translated his own version of Virgil's Aeneid, titling it The Aeneids of Vergil (1876). Although many translations were already available, often produced by trained Classicists, Morris claimed that his unique perspective was as "a poet not a pedant".[125] He also continued producing translations of Icelandic tales with Magnússon, including Three Northern Love Stories (1875) and Völuspa Saga (1876).[126] In 1877 Morris was approached by Oxford University and offered the largely honorary position of Professor of Poetry. He declined, asserting that he felt unqualified, knowing little about scholarship on the theory of poetry.[127]

    In summer 1876 Jenny Morris was diagnosed with epilepsy. Refusing to allow her to be societally marginalised or institutionalised, as was common in the period, Morris insisted that she be cared for by the family.[128] When Janey took May and Jenny to Oneglia in Italy, the latter suffered a serious seizure, with Morris rushing to the country to see her. They then proceeded to visit a number of other cities, including Venice, Padua, and Verona, with Morris attaining a greater appreciation of the country than he had on his previous trip.[129] In April 1879 Morris moved the family home again, this time renting an 18th-century mansion on Hammersmith's Upper Mall in West London. Owned by the novelist George MacDonald, Morris would name it Kelmscott House and re-decorate it according to his own taste.[130] In the House's grounds he set up a workshop, focusing on the production of hand-knotted carpets.[131] Excited that both of his homes were along the course of the River Thames, in August 1880 he and his family took a boat trip along the river from Kelmscott House to Kelmscott Manor.[132]
    Portrait of William Morris by William Blake Richmond

    Morris became politically active in this period, coming to be associated with the radicalist current within British liberalism. He joined the Eastern Question Association (EQA) and was appointed the group's treasurer in November 1876. EQA had been founded by campaigners associated with the centre-left Liberal Party who opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's alliance with the Ottoman Empire; the Association highlighted the Ottoman massacre of Bulgarians and feared that the alliance would lead Disraeli to join the Ottomans in going to war with the Russian Empire.[133] Morris took an active role in the EQA campaign, authoring the lyrics for the song "Wake, London Lads!" to be sung at a rally against military intervention.[134] Morris eventually became disillusioned with the EQA, describing it as being "full of wretched little personalities".[135] He nevertheless joined a regrouping of predominantly working-class EQA activists, the National Liberal League, becoming their treasurer in summer 1879; the group remained small and politically ineffective, with Morris resigning as treasurer in late 1881, shortly before the group's collapse.[136]

    However, his discontent with the British liberal movement grew following the election of the Liberal Party's William Ewart Gladstone to the Premiership in 1880. Morris was particularly angered that Gladstone's government did not reverse the Disraeli regime's occupation of the Transvaal, introduced the Coercion Bill, and oversaw the Bombardment of Alexandria.[137] Morris later related that while he had once believed that "one might further real Socialistic progress by doing what one could on the lines of ordinary middle-class Radicalism", following Gladstone's election he came to realise "that Radicalism is on the wrong line, so to say, and will never develope [sic] into anything more than Radicalism: in fact that it is made for and by the middle classes and will always be under the control of rich capitalists.[138]

    In 1876, Morris visited Burford Church in Oxfordshire, where he was appalled at the restoration conducted by his old mentor, G.E. Street. He recognised that these programs of architectural restoration led to the destruction or major alteration of genuinely old features in order to replace them with "sham old" features, something which appalled him.[139] To combat the increasing trend for restoration, in March 1877 he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), which he personally referred to as "Anti-Scrape". Adopting the role of honorary secretary and treasurer, most of the other early members of SPAB were his friends, while the group's program was rooted in Ruskin's The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849).[140] As part of SPAB's campaign, Morris tried to build connections with art and antiquarian societies and the custodians of old buildings, and also contacted the press to highlight his cause. He was particularly strong in denouncing the ongoing restoration of Tewkesbury Abbey and was vociferous in denouncing the architects responsible, something that deeply upset Street.[141] Turning SPAB's attention abroad, in Autumn 1879 Morris launched a campaign to protect St Mark's Basilica in Venice from restoration, garnering a petition with 2000 signatures, among whom were Disraeli, Gladstone, and Ruskin.[142]
    Later life
    Merton Abbey and the Democratic Federation: 1881–84
    The Pond at Merton Abbey by Lexden Lewis Pocock is an idyllic representation of the works in the time of Morris

    In summer 1881, Morris took out a lease on the seven-acre former silk weaving factory at Merton Abbey Mills, in Merton, Southwest London. Moving his workshops to the site, the premises were used for weaving, dyeing, and creating stained glass; within three years, 100 craftsmen would be employed there.[143] Working conditions at the Abbey were better than at most Victorian factories. However, despite Morris's ideals, there was little opportunity for the workers to display their own individual creativity.[144] Morris had initiated a system of profit sharing among the Firm's upper clerks, however this did not include the majority of workers, who were instead employed on a piecework basis. Morris was aware that, in retaining the division between employer and employed, the company failed to live up to his own egalitarian ideals, but defended this, asserting that it was impossible to run a socialist company within a competitive capitalist economy.[145] The Firm itself was expanding, opening up a store in Manchester in 1883 and holding a stand at that year's Foreign Fair in Boston.[146]

    Janey's relationship with Rossetti had continued through a correspondence and occasional visits, although she found him extremely paranoid and was upset by his addiction to chloral. She last saw him in 1881, and he died in April the following year.[147] Morris described his mixed feelings toward his deceased friend by stating that he had "some of the very greatest qualities of genius, most of them indeed; what a great man he would have been but for the arrogant misanthropy which marred his work, and killed him before his time".[148] In August 1883, Janey would be introduced to the poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, with whom she embarked on a second affair, which Morris might have been aware of.[149]

    In January 1881 Morris was involved in the establishment of the Radical Union, an amalgam of radical working-class groups which hoped to rival the Liberals, and became a member of its executive committee.[150] However, he soon rejected liberal radicalism completely and moved toward socialism.[151] In this period, British socialism was a small, fledgling and vaguely defined movement, with only a few hundred adherents. Britain's first socialist party, the Democratic Federation (DF), had been founded in 1881 by Henry Hyndman, an adherent of the socio-political ideology of Marxism, with Morris joining the DF in January 1883.[152] Morris began to read voraciously on the subject of socialism, including Henry George's Progress and Poverty, Alfred Russel Wallace's Land Nationalisation, and Karl Marx's Das Kapital, although admitted that Marx's economic analysis of capitalism gave him "agonies of confusion on the brain". Instead he preferred the writings of William Cobbett and Sergius Stepniak, although he also read the critique of socialism produced by John Stuart Mill.[153]
    David's Charge to Solomon (1882), a stained-glass window by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris in Trinity Church, Boston, Massachusetts.

    In May 1883, Morris was appointed to the DF's executive, and was soon elected to the position of treasurer.[154] Devoting himself to the socialist cause, he regularly lectured at meetings across Britain, hoping to gain more converts, although was regularly criticised for doing so by the mainstream press.[155] In November 1883 he was invited to speak at University College, Oxford, on the subject of "Democracy and Art" and there began espousing socialism; this shocked and embarrassed many members of staff, earning national press coverage.[156] With other DF members, he travelled to Blackburn, Lancashire in February 1884 amid the great cotton strike, where he lectured on socialism to the strikers.[157] The following month he marched in a central London demonstration commemorating the first anniversary of Marx's death and the thirteenth anniversary of the Paris Commune.[158]

    Morris aided the DF using his artistic and literary talents; he designed the group's membership card,[159] and helped author their manifesto, Socialism Made Plain, in which they demanded improved housing for workers, free compulsory education for all children, free school meals, an eight-hour working day, the abolition of national debt, nationalisation of land, banks, and railways, and the organisation of agriculture and industry under state control and co-operative principles.[154] Some of his DF comrades found it difficult to reconcile his socialist values with his position as proprietor of the Firm, although he was widely admired as a man of integrity.[160] The DF began publishing a weekly newspaper, Justice, which soon faced financial losses that Morris covered. Morris also regularly contributed articles to the newspaper, in doing so befriending another contributor, George Bernard Shaw.[161]

    His socialist activism monopolised his time, forcing him to abandon a translation of the Persian Shahnameh.[162] It also led to him seeing far less of Burne-Jones, with whom he had strong political differences; although once a republican, Burne-Jones had become increasingly conservative, and felt that the DF were exploiting Morris for his talents and influence.[163] While Morris devoted much time to trying to convert his friends to the cause, of Morris' circle of artistic comrades, only Webb and Faulkner fully embraced socialism, while Swinburne expressed his sympathy with it.[164]

    In 1884 the DF renamed itself the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and underwent an internal reorganisation. However, the group was facing an internal schism between those (such as Hyndman), who argued for a parliamentary path toward socialism, and those (like Morris) who deemed the Houses of Parliament intrinsically corrupt and capitalist. Personal issues between Morris and Hyndman were exacerbated by their attitude to British foreign policy; Morris was staunchly anti-imperialist while Hyndman expressed patriotic sentiment encouraging some foreign intervention.[165] The division between the two groups developed into open conflict, with the majority of activists sharing Morris' position. In December 1884 Morris and his supporters – most notably Ernest Belfort Bax and Edward Aveling – left the SDF; the first major schism of the British socialist movement.[166]
    Socialist League: 1884–89
    Left: the cover of the Socialist League's manifesto of 1885 featured art by Morris. Right: detail of Woodpecker tapestry, 1885.

    In December 1884, Morris founded the Socialist League (SL) with other SDF defectors.[167] He composed the SL's manifesto with Bax, describing their position as that of "Revolutionary International Socialism", advocating proletarian internationalism and world revolution while rejecting the concept of socialism in one country.[168] In this, he committed himself to "making Socialists" by educating, organising, and agitating to establish a strong socialist movement; calling on activists to boycott elections, he hoped that socialists would take part in a proletariat revolution and help to establish a socialist society.[169] Bax taught Morris more about Marxism, and introduced him to Marx's collaborator, Friedrich Engels; Engels thought Morris honest but lacking in practical skills to aid the proletariat revolution.[170] Morris remained in contact with other sectors of London's far left community, being a regular at the socialist International Club in Shoreditch, East London,[171] however he avoided the recently created Fabian Society, deeming it too middle-class.[172] Although a Marxist, he befriended prominent anarchist activists Stepniak and Peter Kropotkin,[173][174] and came to be influenced by their anarchist views, to the extent that biographer Fiona MacCarthy described his approach as being "Marxism with visionary libertarianism".[175]

    As the leading figure in the League Morris embarked on a series of speeches and talks on street corners, in working men's clubs, and in lecture theatres across England and Scotland.[176] He also visited Dublin, there offering his support for Irish nationalism,[177] and formed a branch of the League at his Hammersmith house.[93] By the time of their first conference in July 1885, the League had eight branches across England and had affiliations with several socialist groups in Scotland.[178] However, as the British socialist movement grew it faced increased opposition from the establishment, with police frequently arresting and intimidating activists. To combat this, the League joined a Defence Club with other socialist groups, including the SDF, for which Morris was appointed treasurer.[179] Morris was passionate in denouncing the "bullying and hectoring" that he felt socialists faced from the police, and on one occasion was arrested after fighting back against a police officer; a magistrate dismissed the charges.[180] The Black Monday riots of February 1886 led to increased political repression against left-wing agitators, and in July Morris was arrested and fined for public obstruction while preaching socialism on the streets.[181]

    Morris oversaw production of the League's monthly—soon to become weekly—newspaper, Commonweal, serving as its editor for six years, during which time he kept it financially afloat. First published in February 1885, it would contain contributions from such prominent socialists as Engels, Shaw, Paul Lafargue, Wilhelm Liebknecht, and Karl Kautsky, with Morris also regularly writing articles and poems for it.[182] In Commonweal he serialised a 13-episode poem, The Pilgrims of Hope, which was set in the period of the Paris Commune.[183] From November 1886 to January 1887, Morris' novel, A Dream of John Ball, was serialised in Commonweal. Set in Kent during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, it contained strong socialist themes although proved popular among those of different ideological viewpoints, resulting in its publication in book form by Reeves and Turner in 1888.[184] Shortly after, a collection of Morris' essays, Signs of Change, was published.[185]

    Our business[...] is the making of Socialists, i.e. convincing people that Socialism is good for them and is possible. When we have enough people of that way of thinking, they will find out what action is necessary for putting their principles in practice. Therefore, I say, make Socialists. We Socialists can do nothing else that is useful."
    — William Morris.[186]

    From January to October 1890, Morris serialised his novel, News from Nowhere, in Commonweal, resulting in improved circulation for the paper. In March 1891 it was published in book form, before being translated into French, Italian, and German by 1898 and becoming a classic among Europe's socialist community. Combining utopian socialism and soft science fiction, the book tells the tale of a contemporary socialist, William Guest, who falls asleep and awakes in the mid-20th century, discovering a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. In this society there is no private property, no big cities, no authority, no monetary system, no divorce, no courts, no prisons, and no class systems; it was a depiction of Morris' ideal socialist society.[187]

    Morris had also continued with his translation work; in April 1887, Reeves and Turner published the first volume of Morris' translation of Homer's Odyssey, with the second following in November.[188] Venturing into new territory, Morris also authored and starred in a play, The Tables Turned; Or Nupkins Awakened, which was performed at a League meeting in November 1887. It told the story of socialists who are put on trial in front of a corrupt judge; the tale ends with the prisoners behind freed by a proletariat revolution.[189] In June 1889, Morris traveled to Paris as the League's delegate to the International Socialist Working Men's Congress, where his international standing was recognised by being chosen as English spokesman by the Congress committee. The Second International emerged from the Congress, although Morris was distraught at its chaotic and disorganised proceedings.[190]

    At the League's Fourth Conference in May 1888, factional divisions became increasingly apparent between Morris' anti-parliamentary socialists, the parliamentary socialists, and the anarchists; the Bloomsbury Branch were expelled for supporting parliamentary action.[191] Under the leadership of Charles Mowbray, the League's anarchist wing were growing and called on the League to embrace violent action in trying to overthrow the capitalist system.[192] By autumn 1889 the anarchists had taken over the League's executive committee and Morris was stripped of the editorship of Commonweal in favour of the anarchist Frank Kitz.[193] This alienated Morris from the League, which had also become a financial burden for him; he had been subsidising its activities with £500 a year, a very large sum of money at the time.[194] By the autumn of 1890, Morris left the Socialist League, with his Hammersmith branch seceding to become the independent Hammersmith Socialist Society in November 1890.[195]
    The Kelmscott Press and Morris' final years: 1889–96
    Morris (right) with Burne-Jones, 1890

    The work of Morris & Co. continued during Morris's final years, producing an array of stained glass windows designed by Burne-Jones and the six narrative tapestry panels depicting the quest for the Holy Grail for Stanmore Hall, Shropshire.[196] Morris's influence on Britain's artistic community became increasingly apparent as the Art Workers' Guild was founded in 1884, although, at the time, he was too preoccupied with his socialist activism to pay it any attention. Although the proposal faced some opposition, Morris would be elected to the Guild in 1888, and was elected to the position of master in 1892.[197] Morris similarly did not offer initial support for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, but changed his opinion after the success of their first exhibit, held in Regents Street in October 1888. Giving lectures on tapestries for the group, in 1892 he would be elected president.[198] At this time, Morris also re-focused his attentions on SPAB campaigning; those causes he championed including the preservation of St. Mary's Church in Oxford, Blythburgh Church in Suffolk, Peterborough Cathedral, and Rouen Cathedral.[199]

    Although his socialist activism had decreased, he remained involved with the Hammersmith Socialist Society, and in October 1891 oversaw the creation of a short-lived newsletter, the Hammersmith Socialist Record.[200] Coming to oppose factionalism within the socialist movement, he sought to rebuild his relationship with the SDF, appearing as a guest lecturer at some of their events, and supporting SDF candidate George Lansbury when he stood in the Wandsworth by-election of February 1894.[201] In 1893 the Hammersmith Socialist Society co-founded the Joint Committee of Socialist Bodies with representatives of the SDF and Fabian Society; Morris helped draw up its "Manifesto of English Socialists".[202] He offered support for far left activists on trial, including a number of militant anarchists whose violent tactics he nevertheless denounced.[203] He also began using the term "communism" for the first time, stating that "Communism is in fact the completion of Socialism: when that ceases to be militant and becomes triumphant, it will be communism."[204] In December 1895 he gave his final open-air talk at Stepniak's funeral, where he spoke alongside prominent far left activists Eleanor Marx, Kier Hardie, and Errico Malatesta.[205] Liberated from internal factional struggles, he retracted his anti-Parliamentary position and worked for socialist unity, giving his last public lecture in January 1896 on the subject of "One Socialist Party."[29]

    In December 1888, the Chiswick Press published Morris' The House of the Wolfings, a fantasy story set in Iron Age Europe which provides a reconstructed portrait of the lives of Germanic-speaking Gothic tribes. It contained both prose and aspects of poetic verse.[206] A sequel, The Roots of the Mountains, followed in 1890.[207] Over the coming years he would publish a number of other fantasy novels: The Story of the Glittering Plain (1890), The Wood Beyond the World (1894), Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair (1895), The Well at the World's End (1896), The Water of the Wondrous Isles (1897) and The Sundering Flood (1898).[208]

    In 1892 Morris embarked on a publication of the Anglo-Saxon tale Beowulf by contacting the Anglo-Saxon specialist Alfred John Wyatt at Christ's College, Cambridge and asking him to provide a translation of the text in prose, on which Morris based his poetical version.[209] On publication in February 1895, Morris' Beowulf was not well received.[210] With a production cost of £485 it was also one of the more expensive productions of the Kelmscott Press, on which Morris would make a financial loss.[209]

    Following the death of the sitting Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in October 1892, Morris was offered the position, but turned it down, disliking its associations with the monarchy and political establishment; instead the position went to Alfred Austin.[211]
    Morris' design for the Kelmscott Press' trademark

    In January 1891, Morris began renting a cottage near to Kelmscott House, No. 16 Upper Mall in Hammersmith, which would serve as the first premises of the Kelmscott Press, before relocating to the neighbouring No. 14 in May, that same month in which the company was founded. Devoted to the production of books which he deemed beautiful, Morris was artistically influenced by the illustrated manuscripts and early printed books of Medieval and Early Modern Europe, and commissioned custom typefaces such as his "Golden Type", cut by Edward Prince, to replicate them.[212] Before publishing its first work, Morris ensured that he had mastered the techniques of printing and secured supplies of hand-made paper and vellum which would be necessary for production.[213] Over the next seven years, they would publish 66 volumes.[214] The first of these would be one of Morris' own novels, The Story of the Glittering Plain, which was published in May 1891 and soon sold out. The Kelmscott Press would go on to publish 23 of Morris' books, more than those of any other author.[215] The press also published editions of works by Keats, Shelley, Ruskin, and Swinburne, as well as copies of various Medieval texts.[216] A number of the Press' books contained illustrations provided by Burne-Jones.[217]
    Title pages designed by Morris for The works of Geoffrey Chaucer, newly imprinted

    The Press' magnum opus would be the Kelmscott Chaucer, published in an edition of 425 copies, which had taken years to complete and included 87 illustrations from Burne-Jones.[218] Morris still remained firmly in an employer relation with those working at the Press, although organised outings for them and paid them above average wages.[219]

    By the early 1890s, Morris was increasingly ill and living largely as an invalid; aside from his gout, he also exhibited signs of epilepsy.[220] In August 1891, he took his daughter Jenny on a tour of Northern France to visit the Medieval churches and cathedrals.[221] Back in England, he spent an increasing amount of time at Kelmscott Manor.[222] Seeking treatment from the prominent doctor William Broadbent, he was prescribed a holiday in the coastal town of Folkestone.[223] In December 1894 he was devastated upon learning of his mother's death; she had been 90 years old.[224] In July 1896, he went on a cruise to Norway with construction engineer John Carruthers, during which he visited Vadsö and Trondheim; during the trip his physical condition deteriorated and he began experiencing hallucinations.[225] Returning to Kelmscott House, he became a complete invalid, being visited by friends and family, before dying of tuberculosis on the morning of 4 October 1896.[226] Obituaries appearing throughout the national press reflected that, at the time, Morris was widely recognised primarily as a poet. Mainstream press obituaries trivialised or dismissed his involvement in socialism, although the socialist press focused largely on this aspect of his career.[227] His funeral was held on 6 October, during which his corpse was carried from Hammersmith to Paddington rail station, where it was transported to Oxford, and from there to Kelmscott, where it was buried in the churchyard of St. George's Church.[228]
    Personal life
    Jane Burden Morris portrayed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Dante Alighieri's muse Beatrice, 1869

    Morris' biographer E.P. Thompson described him as having a "robust bearing, and a slight roll in his walk", alongside a "rough beard" and "disordered hair".[229] The author Henry James described Morris as "short, burly, corpulent, very careless and unfinished in his dress ... He has a loud voice and a nervous restless manner and a perfectly unaffected and businesslike address. His talk indeed is wonderfully to the point and remarkable for clear good sense."[229] Morris' first biographer Mackail described him as being both "a typical Englishman" and "a typical Londoner of the middle class" albeit one who was transformed into "something quite individual" through the "force of his genius".[230] MacCarthy described Morris' lifestyle as being "late Victorian, mildly bohemian, but bourgeois",[231] with Mackail commenting that he exhibited many of the traits of the bourgeois Victorian class: "industrious, honest, fair-minded up their lights, but unexpansive and unsympathetic".[232] Although he generally disliked children,[233] Morris also exhibited a strong sense of responsibility toward his family.[57] Mackail nevertheless thought he "was interested in things much more than in people" and that while he did ha ...................MORE AT LINK..

    POEMS----

    Written by William Morris | Create an image from this poem
    The Doomed Ship

    The doomed ship drives on helpless through the sea,
    All that the mariners may do is done
    And death is left for men to gaze upon,
    While side by side two friends sit silently;
    Friends once, foes once, and now by death made free
    Of Love and Hate, of all things lost or won;
    Yet still the wonder of that strife bygone
    Clouds all the hope or horror that may be.


    Thus, Sorrow, are we sitting side by side
    Amid this welter of the grey despair,
    Nor have we images of foul or fair
    To vex, save of thy kissed face of a bride,
    Thy scornful face of tears when I was tried,
    And failed neath pain I was not made to bear.

    Written by William Morris | Create an image from this poem
    Autumn

    Laden Autumn here I stand
    Worn of heart, and weak of hand:
    Nought but rest seems good to me,
    Speak the word that sets me free.

    Written by William Morris | Create an image from this poem
    Spring

    Spring am I, too soft of heart
    Much to speak ere I depart:
    Ask the Summer-tide to prove
    The abundance of my love.

    Written by William Morris | Create an image from this poem
    Summer

    Summer looked for long am I:
    Much shall change or e'er I die.

    Prithee take it not amiss
    Though I weary thee with bliss.

    Written by William Morris | Create an image from this poem
    The Earthly Paradise: Apology

    Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
    I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
    Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
    Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
    Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
    Or hope again for aught that I can say,
    The idle singer of an empty day.


    But rather, when aweary of your mirth,
    From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,
    And, feeling kindly unto all the earth,
    Grudge every minute as it passes by,
    Made the more mindful that the sweet days die--
    --Remember me a little then I pray,
    The idle singer of an empty day.


    The heavy trouble, the bewildering care
    That weighs us down who live and earn our bread,
    These idle verses have no power to bear;
    So let em sing of names remember{`e}d,
    Because they, living not, can ne'er be dead,
    Or long time take their memory quite away
    From us poor singers of an empty day.


    Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
    Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
    Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
    Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,
    Telling a tale not too importunate
    To those who in the sleepy region stay,
    Lulled by the singer of an empty day.


    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,
    And through a third the fruited vines a-row,
    While still, unheard, but in its wonted way,
    Piped the drear wind of that December day.


    So with this Earthly Paradise it is,
    If ye will read aright, and pardon me,
    Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss
    Midmost the beating of the steely sea,
    Where tossed about all hearts of men must be;
    Whose ravening monsters mighty men shall slay,
    Not the poor singer of an empty day.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    The HyperTexts
    Kevin N. Roberts



    Kevin Nicholas Roberts [1969-2008] was a poet, fiction writer and professor of English Literature. He died on December 10, 2008. Kevin spent three years in the English countryside of Suffolk writing Romantic poetry and studying the Romantic Masters beside the North Sea. His poetry has been compared to that of Swinburne, one of his major influences. Kevin was born on the 4th of April in the United States, which, accounting for the hour of his birth and the time zone difference, just happened to be Swinburne's birthdate, April the 5th, in England. Roberts claimed to be the reincarnation of Swinburne ...

    ----------------------------------------------------
    ----------------------------------------------------

    Rondel


    Our time has passed on swift and careless feet,
    With sighs and smiles and songs both sad and sweet.
    Our perfect hours have grown and gone so fast,
    And these are things we never can repeat.
    Though we might plead and pray that it would last,
    Our time has passed.

    Like shreds of mist entangled in a tree,
    Like surf and sea foam on a foaming sea,
    Like all good things we know can never last,
    Too soon we'll see the end of you and me.
    Despite the days and realms that we amassed,
    Our time has passed.



    It Is Too Late

    It is too late. Though we would reinspire
    Our dream, rewake a dead desire,
    A dismal sea divides our sighs and smiles;
    Between us now so many months and miles
    And tears for all things torn away by time,
    For faded flowers grown pale and past their prime.
    And no sweet words can make sick joys revive,
    no mystic kiss keeps loves long dead alive.
    What mortal hand can stay the hand of fate?
    It is too late.

    Astrologia

    Based on the painting by Sir Edward Burne-Jones

    What secrets burn behind the glass;
    What spirits climb?
    What sorry things and sad things pass;
    What things sublime;
    What fate, unfolding like a book,
    For her from whom one brief glance took
    All innocence and hope for all of time?

    Behind her eyes, where grief is grown,
    Desire dies
    With sighs for all the sorrows flown
    And joy that flies
    And fades the blush upon her cheek,
    Her eyes so beautiful and bleak,
    Their blue the subtle blue of seas and skies.

    Though knowing is a kind of curse
    She can but keep,
    She knows not yet which wound is worse,
    Which pain more deep—
    The pulse of perfect hours fled
    Or endless years that lay ahead
    With nothing left to do but wait and weep.



    Introductory lines from Fatal Women

    The darker side of our love,
    A lighter shade of death.
    The thing that brings me comfort:
    The sweet sleeping sound of your breath.



    Hyacinthe

    Like splendid seas and faultless as a flower
    And aptly called by flushing flower’s name,
    With sad sweet voice possessed of fairy power
    That made me love long ere we met, the same
    As had we loved some lost long fevered hour
    In frenzied throes, with flesh and lips aflame.

    Smooth-skinned and white, with soft pale throat perfumed
    And languid limbs that cry to be caressed
    And kissed and clutched and full-consumed,
    Her passioned lips half-mad to be possessed:
    Asleep, alone, with mermaid-dreams entombed,
    She waits, frail hands laid light upon her chest.

    Mad dreams drone past of maiden pleasures missed,
    A flood of fears and subtle, silent sighs,
    Half-parted lips, as though they’ve just been kissed,
    Half-haunted eyes grown wide and wild and wise,
    Reflecting shades, like ghosted clouds of mist,
    But clear and calm like sultry seas and skies.

    A kiss to wake forgotten fairy powers!
    One hallowed touch to conjure sacred sight!
    A heart that bleeds to show what shall be ours
    In starry eyes so soft and warm and bright:
    A swarm of savage, sad, redemptive stars
    In some eternal sacrificial night.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    POEMS BY WILLA CATHER:

    Arcadian Winter
    The Hawthorn Tree
    London Roses
    Paradox
    Poppies on Ludlow Castle
    The Tavern


    ****** ARCADIAN WINTER
    by: Willa Cather (1873-1947)

    OE is me to tell it thee,
    Winter winds in Arcady!
    Scattered is thy flock and fled
    From the glades where once it fed,
    And the snow lies drifted white
    In the bower of our delight,
    Where the beech threw gracious shade
    On the cheek of boy and maid:
    And the bitter blasts make roar
    Through the fleshless sycamore.

    White enchantment holds the spring,
    Where thou once wert wont to sing,
    And the cold hath cut to death
    Reeds melodious of thy breath.
    He, the rival of thy lyre,
    Nightingale with note of fire,
    Sings no more; but far away,
    From the windy hill-side gray,
    Calls the broken note forlorn
    Of an aged shepherd's horn.

    Still about the fire they tell
    How it long ago befell
    That a shepherd maid and lad
    Met and trembled and were glad;
    When the swift spring waters ran,
    And the wind to boy or man
    Brought the aching of his sires--
    Song and love and all desires.
    Ere the starry dogwoods fell
    They were lovers, so they tell.

    Woe is me to tell it thee,
    Winter winds in Arcady!
    Broken pipes and vows forgot,
    Scattered flocks returning not,
    Frozen brook and drifted hill,
    Ashen sun and song-birds still;
    Songs of summer and desire
    Crooned about the winter fire;
    Shepherd lads with silver hair,
    Shepherd maids no longer fair.

    "Arcadian Winter" is reprinted from April Twilights. Willa Cather. Boston: The Gorham Press, 1903.

    ***** THE HAWTHORN TREE
    by: Willa Cather (1873-1947)

    CROSS the shimmering meadows--
    Ah, when he came to me!
    In the spring-time,
    In the night-time,
    In the starlight,
    Beneath the hawthorn tree.

    Up from the misty marsh-land--
    Ah, when he climbed to me!
    To my white bower,
    To my sweet rest,
    To my warm breast,
    Beneath the hawthorn tree.

    Ask of me what the birds sang,
    High in the hawthorn tree;
    What the breeze tells,
    What the rose smells,
    What the stars shine--
    Not what he said to me!

    "The Hawthorn Tree" is reprinted from April Twilights. Willa Cather. Boston: The Gorham Press, 1903.

    ****** LONDON ROSES
    by: Willa Cather (1873-1947)

    "OWSES, Rowses! Penny a bunch!" they tell you--
    Slattern girls in Trafalgar, eager to sell you.
    Roses, roses, red in the Kensington sun,
    Holland Road, High Street, Bayswater, see you and smell you--
    Roses of London town, red till the summer is done.


    Roses, roses, locust and lilac, perfuming
    West End, East End, wondrously budding and blooming
    Out of the black earth, rubbed in a million hands,
    Foot-trod, sweat-sour over and under, entombing
    Highways of darkness, deep gutted with iron bands.

    "Rowses, rowses! Penny a bunch!" they tell you,
    Ruddy blooms of corruption, see you and smell you,
    Born of stale earth, fallowed with squalor and tears--
    North shire, south shire, none are like these, I tell you,
    Roses of London perfumed with a thousand years.

    "London Roses" is reprinted from April Twilights. Willa Cather. Boston: The Gorham Press, 1903.

    ****** POPPIES ON LUDLOW CASTLE
    by: Willa Cather (1873-1947)

    THROUGH halls of vanished pleasure,
    And hold of vanished power,
    And crypt of faith forgotten,
    A came to Ludlow tower.

    A-top of arch and stairway,
    Of crypt and donjan cell,
    Of council hall, and chamber,
    Of wall, and ditch, and well,

    High over grated turrets
    Where clinging ivies run,
    A thousand scarlet poppies
    Enticed the rising sun,

    Upon the topmost turret,
    With death and damp below,--
    Three hundred years of spoilage,--
    The crimson poppies grow.

    This hall it was that bred him,
    These hills that knew him brave,
    The gentlest English singer
    That fills an English grave.

    How have they heart to blossom
    So cruel and gay and red,
    When beauty so hath perished
    And valour so hath sped?

    When knights so fair are rotten,
    And captains true asleep,
    And singing lips are dust-stopped
    Six English earth-feet deep?

    When ages old remind me
    How much hath gone for naught,
    What wretched ghost remaineth
    Of all that flesh hath wrought;

    Of love and song and warring,
    Of adventure and play,
    Of art and comely building,
    Of faith and form and fray--

    I'll mind the flowers of pleasure,
    Of short-lived youth and sleep,
    That drunk the sunny weather
    A-top of Ludlow keep.

    "Poppies on Ludlow Castle" is reprinted from April Twilights. Willa Cather. Boston: The Gorham Press, 1903.

    ****** THE TAVERN
    by: Willa Cather (1873-1947)

    N the tavern of my heart
    Many a one has sat before,
    Drunk red wine and sung a stave,
    And, departing, come no more.
    When the night was cold without,
    And the ravens croaked of storm,
    They have sat them at my hearth,
    Telling me my house was warm.

    As the lute and cup went round,
    They have rhymed me well in lay;--
    When the hunt was on at morn,
    Each, departing, went his way.
    On the walls, in compliment,
    Some would scrawl a verse or two,
    Some have hung a willow branch,
    Or a wreath of corn-flowers blue.

    Ah! my friend, when thou dost go,
    Leave no wreath of flowers for me;
    Not pale daffodils nor rue,
    Violets nor rosemary.
    Spill the wine upon the lamps,
    Tread the fire, and bar the door;
    So despoil the wretched place,
    None will come forevermore.

    "The Tavern" is reprinted from April Twilights. Willa Cather. Boston: The Gorham Press, 1903.


    ---------------------------------
    -----------------------------------
    ----------------------------------------------
    Discovering Willa Cather
    Written by: Tara Marta

    As a high school student, I studied many literary classics by authors like Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Jane Austen, just to name a few. I knew all about Hamlet’s dilemmas, Jean Valjean’s prison sentence, and Mr. Darcy’s s sexual appeal to women. At the time, I thought I’d heard about every literary giant in American Literature, yet there remained one author who seemed utterly forgotten; someone whose name never appeared on summer reading lists or whose stories never made it into our textbooks – Willa Cather.

    I first discovered Cather not through books, but, of all places, through television. A film adaptation of her novel My Antonia aired in 1995, and I became instantly enamored with the story, which involved three main elements: Jim, Antonia, and a prairie. Still, I had no idea that the movie had actually been a book written by Willa Cather. Fast forward several years later when I found a copy at a used book sale. Upon reading the novel, I became captivated by Cather’s unique style of writing. Nobody could tell a story with such profundity quite like she could.

    Per my usual habit after reading a good book, I did an intensive study on the life of Willa Cather in an effort to get to know the woman behind the words. Through my research I learned that Cather, born in Virginia on December 7, 1873, moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska with her parents and siblings at the age of nine. Life on the prairie did not seem to suit the young girl, and she spent much of her time longing for the home she left behind. Fate, however, had other plans, and little did Cather know that the prairie life she so readily despised, would one day come to serve as a prominent character in two of her most important novels – My Antonia and O’ Pioneers!

    During the early part of her life, Cather entertained the idea of becoming a doctor. Her dream of writing did not take flight until a college professor, unbeknownst to her, had one of her essays on Thomas Carlyle published in the Nebraska State Journal. From that moment on Cather became smitten with the written word, and readers have been benefiting from it ever since.

    Cather’s incredible gift for writing exhibited not only a person of high intelligence, but an immensely prolific storyteller. She created unforgettable characters and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for the novel One of Ours, much to the dismay of Ernest Hemingway who complained that a woman had no business writing a war novel. Luckily for Cather, readers did not agree.

    For me, Cather’s appeal does not solely belong to her work; rather, much can be learned from the way in which she lived her life. At a time when women lived within the confines of conformity, Cather broke barriers to forge her own path – one that did not adhere to being a conventional woman. No marriage, no children, no questions asked, and if one did ask, she likely never felt obliged to answer. She spoke her mind, valued her privacy, and remained unapologetic for her autonomous lifestyle.

    When Willa Cather died on April 24, 1947, she left behind an enduring legacy, which included not only great works of literature – even if schools still do not add them to the reading list – but a lasting impression of a strong willed woman whose brilliant acumen kept her way ahead of her time. Although she might be unappreciative of the many books that have been written about her, particularly a recent one containing her personal letters, perhaps she would forgive the intrusion if she knew that we merely wish to get a glimpse into the soul of a woman whose impact has lasted nearly seventy years after her death. Only great writers have the ability to enjoy such longevity.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    The HyperTexts

    Anne Reeve Aldrich: American Sappho

    Anne Reeve Aldrich was an American poet and novelist. She was born April 25, 1866, in New York and died June 22, 1892, also in New York. Her books include The Rose of Flame (1889), The Feet of Love (1890), Nadine and Other Poems (1893), A Village Ophelia and Other Stories (1899) and Songs about Life, Love, and Death (1892). She wrote a number of poems in which she seemed to prophesy an early death for herself, then died at the tender age of 26. According to the preface of Songs about Life, Love, and Death, which was published posthumously, at the time of her death she was so weak that she couldn’t lift her pen, and thus had to dictate her last poem, “Death at Daybreak.” Her grand-uncle was the poet James Aldrich. She published her first volume of poetry, The Rose of Flame in 1889; it was not well received (critics cited its "unrestrained expression"). She was also said to have written “erotic” poems. But she persevered, publishing a novel, The Feet of Love, in 1890, and it seems she was working on her final volume of poems even on her deathbed.

    SONGS ABOUT LIFE, LOVE, AND DEATH: “Passion and agony, the one because of the other, are the keys of Anne Reeve Aldrich's nature and verse. This woman is of the few who nearest share the moods of Sappho and her talents.”—Springfield Republican, circa 1892, as quoted in The Book Buyer, volume X, no. 3, April, 1893

    http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=495441&t=w

    Anne Reeve Aldrich (1866-1892)

    http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/4994/aaty2.gif

    Artistic rendering of Sappho by William Adolphe Bouguereau



    Servitude

    The church was dim at vespers.
    My eyes were on the Rood.
    But yet I felt thee near me,
    In every drop of blood.

    In helpless, trembling bondage
    My soul's weight lies on thee,
    O call me not at dead of night,
    Lest I should come to thee!



    When I Was Thine

    "Ricordati da me quand 'ero teco." Tuscan Rispetto.

    THE sullen rain breaks on the convent window,
    The distant chanting dies upon mine ears.
    —Soon comes the morn for which my soul hath languished,
    For which my soul hath yearned these many years;
    Forget of me this life which I resign,
    Think of me in the days when I was thine.

    Forget the paths my weary feet have travelled,
    The thorns and stones that pierced them as I went;
    These later days of prayer and scourge and penance,
    These hours of anguish now so nearly spent.
    Forget I left thy life for life divine,
    Think of me in the days when I was thine.

    Forget the rigid brow as thou wilt see it,
    The folded eyelids, and the quiet mouth.
    Think how my eyes grew brighter at thy coming,
    Think of those fervid noontides in the South.
    Think when my kisses made life half divine,
    Think of me in the days when I was thine.

    Forget this nearer past, I do adjure thee,
    Remember only what was long ago.
    Think when our love was fire unquenched by ashes,
    Think of our Spring, and not this Winter's snow.
    Forget me as I lie, past speech or sign.
    Think of me in the days when I was thine.



    Souvenirs

    Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

    Where is the glove that I gave to him,
    Perfumed and warm from my arm that night?
    And where is the rose that another stole
    When the land was flooded with June moonlight,
    And the satin slipper I wore?—Alack,
    Some one had that—it was wrong, I fear.
    Where are these souvenirs today?
    But where are the snows of yesteryear?

    The glove was burned at his next love's prayer,
    And the rose was lost in the mire of the street;
    And the satin slipper he tossed away,
    For his jealous bride had not fairy feet.
    Give what you will, but know, mesdames,
    For a day alone are your favors dear.
    Be sure for the next fair woman's sake
    They will go—like the snows of yesteryear.



    A Little Parable

    I made the cross myself whose weight
    Was later laid on me.
    This thought is torture as I toil
    Up life’s steep Calvary.

    To think mine own hands drove the nails!
    I sang a merry song,
    And chose the heaviest wood I had
    To build it firm and strong.

    If I had guessed—if I had dreamed
    Its weight was meant for me,
    I should have made a lighter cross
    To bear up Calvary!



    My Guerdon

    I stood where gifts were showered on men from Heaven,
    And some had honors and the joy thereof;
    And some received with solemn, radiant faces
    The gift of love.

    The green I saw of bay-leaves, and of laurel,
    Of gold the gleam.
    A voice spoke to me, standing empty-handed,
    "For thee a dream."

    Forbear to pity, ye who richly laden
    Forth from the place of Heaven s bounty went;
    Who marvel that I smile, my hands still empty
    I am content.

    Ye cannot guess how dowered beyond the measure
    Of your receiving to myself I seem.
    Lonely and cold, I yet pass on enraptured—
    I have my dream.



    The Prayer of Dolores

    Madrid, 1888

    Beneath the grass, I hear them say,
    Live loathsome things that hate the day,—
    Strange crawling shapes with blinded eyes,
    Whose very image terrifies.
    I dread not these: make deep my bed
    With good black mold round heart and head.
    But oh! the fear a Thought may creep
    Down from the world to where I sleep,
    Pierce through the earth to heart and brain
    And coil there, in its home again!
    Father, thou hast the good God’s ear, —
    And when priests speak He bends to hear,—
    Say, " Lord, this woman of Madrid
    Begs, when herself in earth is hid,
    Her soul s guilt paid for, grain by grain,
    In throes of purgatorial pain,
    That Thou her soul wouldst clean destroy;
    She hath no wish for heavenly joy,

    But just to be dissolved to Naught,
    Beyond the reach of any thought.
    Some sinners dare to beg for bliss,
    I know my place, and ask but this:
    That He, who made will then unmake
    My soul, for His sweet mercy s sake!"



    Fraternity

    I ask not how thy suffering came,
    Or if by sin, or if by shame,
    Or if by Fate’s capricious rulings:
    To my large pity all’s the same.

    Come close and lean against a heart
    Eaten by pain and stung by smart;
    It is enough if thou hast suffered,—
    Brother or sister then thou art.

    We will not speak of what we know,
    Rehearse the pang, nor count the throe,
    Nor ask what agony admitted
    Thee to the Brotherhood of Woe.

    But in our anguish-darkened land
    Let us draw close, and clasp the hand;
    Our whispered password holds assuagement,—
    The solemn “Yea, I understand!”



    Separation

    If it were land, oh, weary feet could travel,
    If it were sea, a ship might cleave the wave,
    If it were Death, sad Love could look to heaven.
    And see through tears the sunlight on the grave.
    Not land, or sea. or death keeps us apart
    But only thou, oh unforgiving Heart.

    If it were land, through piercing thorns I'd travel.
    If it were sea, I'd cross to thee, or die.
    If it were Death, I'd tear Life's veil asunder
    That I might see thee with a clearer eye.
    Ah none of these could keep our souls apart —
    Forget, forgive, oh unforgiving Heart.



    The End

    Do you recall that little room
    Close blinded from the searching sun,
    So dim, my blossoms dreamed of dusk?
    And shut their petals one by one.
    And then a certain crimson eve,
    The death of day upon the tide;
    How all its blood spread on the waves,
    And stained the waters far and wide.
    Ah, you forget;
    But I remember yet.

    When I awake in middle night,
    And stretch warm hands to touch your face,
    There is no chance that I shall find
    Aught but your chill and empty place.
    I have no bitter word to say,
    The Past is worth this anguish sore,
    —But mouth to mouth, and heart to heart,
    No more on earth, O God, no more!
    For Love is dead;
    Would 't were I, instead.



    In Extremis

    The sacred tapers flickered fair,
    The priest has gone with Host and prayer;
    I heard the "Nunc Dimittis" said,
    Not with the heart, but with the head.

    Though I, the while, lay dying near,
    This was all my heart could hear:
    "I love thee, lay thy lips on mine,
    Thy kisses turn my head like wine."

    And this was all my heart could see,
    Instead of the cross held out to me,
    That well-known small and scented room,
    Made sweetly dusk by curtain's gloom.

    And this was all my heart could feel,
    Spite of these pains like stabbing steel,
    The throbbing pulses of thy breast,
    Where, weary, I was wont to rest.

    O what shall come to me, alas!
    Whose soul so soon in death must pass
    The soul too wholly thine to dwell
    On hope of heaven, or dread of hell.

    If heaven, that awful glassy sea,
    May still reflect some memory.
    If hell, not all eternal fire,
    Can quite burn out the old desire.

    Instead of name of pitying saint
    Breathed as the passing soul's last plaint,
    Thy name will be my latest breath.
    Who wast my life, who art my death.



    Love, the Destroyer

    Love is a Fire;
    Nor Shame, nor Pride can well withstand Desire.
    "For what are they," we cry, "that they should dare
    To keep, O Love, the haughty look they wear?
    Nay, burn the victims, O thou sacred Fire,
    That with their death thou mayst but flame the higher.
    Let them feel once the fierceness of thy breath,
    And make thee still more beauteous with their death."

    Love is a Fire;
    But ah, how short-lived is the flame Desire!
    Love, having burnt whatever once we cherished,
    And blackened all things else, itself hath perished.
    And now alone in gathering night we stand,
    Ashes and ruin stretch on either hand.
    Yet while we mourn, our sad hearts whisper low:
    "We served the mightiest God that man can know."



    Outer Darkness

    Where shall I look for help? Our gracious God
    Pities all those who weep for sin ingrain,
    And potent is the Kingly Victim's blood
    To wash repented guilt, and leave no stain.

    But ah, what hope for me in Heaven above,
    What consolation left beneath the sun,
    In those black hours when my lost soul laments
    Because it left that one sweet sin undone?



    A Return to the Valley

    Behold me at thy feet. Alone I climbed
    And wandered through the mountain land of Art
    Amid God's awful snows; the keen thin air
    Pierced through my brain, and chilled me at the heart.

    Behold me at thy feet. A famished heart
    Does ill to travel by such paths as these.
    Better for me to seek this vale once more,
    Better for me to crouch here at thy knees.

    Behold me at thy feet. And thou dost stretch
    No tender hand to raise me to thy breast.
    Ah, 't is a foolish bird that hopes to find
    Untouched, in leafless hedge, its last year's nest.

    I will depart, and seek again the heights,
    Above hot love, or wholesome hate of foes.
    But from this day my pilgrim feet must leave
    A track of blood across the awful snows.



    A Song About Singing

    O nightingale, the poet's bird,
    A kinsman dear thou art,
    Who never sings so well as when
    The rose-thorns bruise his heart.

    But since thy agony can make
    A listening world so blest,
    Be sure it cares but little for
    Thy wounded, bleeding breast!



    April—and Dying

    Green blood fresh pulsing through the trees,
    Blacks buds, that sun and shower distend;
    All other things begin anew,
    But I must end.

    Warm sunlight on faint-colored sward,
    Warm fragrance in the breezes’ breath;
    For other things art heat and life,
    For me is death.



    Death at Daybreak

    I shall go out when the light comes in—
    There lie my cast-off form and face;
    I shall pass Dawn on her way to earth,
    As I seek for a path through space.

    I shall go out when the light comes in;
    Would I might take one ray with me!
    It is blackest night between the worlds,
    And how is a soul to see?



    In Conclusion

    O Love, take these my songs, made for thy joy,
    And speak one tender word of them to me.
    And other praise or blame that word will drown
    As voice of brook is drowned by sounding sea.

    Like all my joys and woes, my garnered verse
    To lay at thy dear feet I haste to bring.
    Be gracious. Love, remembering that the mouth
    Touched by thine own, could scarcely fail to sing!



    A Draught

    A bitter cup you offer me,
    Though roses hide its brim with red.
    Yet since your strong hand proffers it,
    I shall not spurn, but drink instead.

    And when the draught has done its work.
    And I lie low, who now stand high.
    You, who encompassed this, will pass
    With loathing and averted eye.

    Yet none the less I humbly bow.
    And drain the cup on bended knee.
    That holds within its hollow gold
    Your pleasure, and your scorn of me.



    Recollection

    How can it be that I forget
    The way he phrased my doom,
    When I recall the arabesques
    That carpeted the room?

    How can it be that I forget
    His look and mein that hour,
    When I recall I wore a rose,
    And still can smell the flower?

    How can it be that I forget
    Those words that were his last,
    When I recall the tune a man
    Was whistling as he passed?

    These things are what we keep from life's
    Supremest joy or pain;
    For memory locks her chaff in bins
    And throws away the grain.



    Suppose

    How sad if, by some strange new law,
    All kisses scarred!
    For she who is most beautiful
    Would be most marred.

    And we might be surprised to see
    Some lovely wife
    Smooth-visaged, while a seeming prude
    Was marked for life.



    In November

    Brown earth-line meets gray heaven,
    And all the land looks sad;
    But Love’s the little leaven
    That works the whole world glad.
    Sigh, bitter win; lower, frore clouds of gray:
    My Love and I are living now in May!



    Love's Change

    I went to dig a grave for Love,
    But the earth was so stiff and cold
    That, though I stove through the bitter night,
    I could not break the mould.

    And I said: 'Must he lie in my house in state,
    And stay in his wonted place?
    Must I have him with me another day,
    With that awful change in his face?'



    Music Of Hungary

    My body answers you, my blood
    Leaps at your maddening, piercing call
    The fierce notes startle, and the veil
    Of this dull present seems to fall.
    My soul responds to that long cry;
    It wants its country, Hungary!
    Not mine by birth. Yet have I not
    Some strain of that old Magyar race?
    Else why the secret stir of sense
    At sight of swarthy Tzigane face,
    That warns me: 'Lo, thy kinsmen nigh.'
    All's dear that tastes of Hungary.

    Once more, O let me hear once more
    The passion and barbaric rage!
    Let me forget my exile here
    In this mild land, in this mild age;
    Once more that unrestrained wild cry
    That takes me to my Hungary!

    They listen with approving smile,
    But I, O God, I want my home!
    I want the Tzigane tongue, the dance,
    The nights in tents, the days to roam,
    O music, O fierce life and free
    God made my soul for Hungary!



    The Rose of Flame

    Look at this tangled snare of undergrowth,
    These low-branched trees that darken all below;
    Drink in the hot scent of this noontide air,
    And hear, far off, some distant river flow,
    Lamenting ever till it finds the sea.
    New Life, new World, what's Shame to thee and me ?

    Let us slay Shame; we shall forget his grave
    Locked in the rapture of our lone embrace.
    Yet what if there should rise, as once of old,
    New wonder of this new, yet ancient place:
    An angel, with a whirling sword of flame,
    To drive us forth forever in God's name!



    A Wanderer

    The snows lie thick around his door,
    That door made fast by bar and lock.
    He will not heed thee, trembling, chilled;
    He will not hear thy piteous knock.

    Poor wandering Heart, canst thou not see
    There is no welcome here for thee?
    The air is numb with frost and night.
    O wait no longer in the snow,

    For lo, from yonder latticed pane
    Faint music and the fire-light's glow;
    He hath another guest in state,
    And thou, poor Heart, thou art too late!



    Lent

    Ah, the road is a weary road
    That leads one on to God,
    And all too swift the eager race
    To suit a lagging pace,
    And far, far distant looks the goal
    To the most patient soul.
    So I forsook the sharp set road,
    And walked where pleasant herbs were sowed.
    I flung the sandals from tired feet,
    And strayed where honeyed flowers grew sweet,
    Nor strained tense nerves, nor onward pressed,
    But made the goal his breast.
    His circling arms my Heaven I made,
    And, save to him, no more I prayed.
    So for my sin I paid the price
    Of endless joys of Paradise.
    Good fellow-pilgrims, go your way.
    For me 't is all in vain to pray.
    I weep, when o'er the windy track
    Your victors' hymns float echoing back,
    But still I know, with eyelids wet,
    I could return, but not forget.



    Dreams

    So still I lay within his arms
    He dreamed I was asleep,
    Across my lips I felt his breath
    Like burning breezes creep.

    I felt his watchful, searching gaze
    Though closed eyes cannot see;
    I felt his warm and tender grasp
    More closely prison me.

    The waking dream was all too sweet
    For me to wish to sleep.
    I was too far beyond Earth's woes
    To speak, or smile, or weep.

    How after this, could I endure
    The troublous times of Age and Tears,
    To sit and wait for Death to dawn
    Across the midnight of my years!

    Love will not stay, though we entreat;
    Death will not come at call.
    Ah, to return to life and grief!
    Ah, having risen to fall!

    I felt his mouth burn on my own;
    I raised my eyes to his eyes' deep.
    He thought his kiss had wakened me,
    —He dreamed I was asleep!



    Under the Rose

    He moved with trembling fingers
    From my throat, the band of red,
    And a band of burning kisses
    His lips set there instead.

    Then he tied again the ribbon.
    "I will hide them, Love," said he,
    "And the secret of thy necklace
    None shall know, save thee and me."

    It was just a foolish fancy,
    But from that day to this,
    I wore the crimson ribbon
    To hide my lover's kiss.

    He has gone, and love is over,
    But this blade within my hand,
    Still shall hide our secret kisses
    With another crimson band.



    Immolation

    Take her, and lay her head upon thy breast,
    And be thou blest beyond thy heart's desire;
    And as the star that ushers in the dawn
    Fades from the sight in morning's glow and fire,

    So, having heralded thy break of day,
    'T is Nature's law that I no longer stay.
    A path was I that led thee to thy goal;
    Forget the path, since now the goal is won.

    That was its proper place in all the land,
    And it was made to set thy feet upon.
    Its blessing is that all its course did tend
    To bring thee to thy journey's happy end.



    Arcadia

    Sunlight on us, Love;
    Not a shadow comes between.
    Midway of the field we stand,
    Heart in heart and hand in hand
    And all the land is green.

    Look around thee, Love,
    Naught but meadows shining fair,
    Save, as far as eye can see,
    Long, low hills, clothed tenderly
    By the veils of mist they wear.

    But below us, Love,
    Hidden by the meadow's rise,
    Whispers brokenly a stream
    Like a voice heard in a dream;
    Clear its current as thine eyes.

    Thou must linger, Love,
    For a little on this side;
    Both its banks are soft with moss.
    Grieve not, Dear, that I shall cross,
    For but shallow is its tide.

    Canst not see it, Love?
    Nay, Heart's Dearest, nor can I;
    But in pauses to mine ear
    Comes the sound thou canst not hear,
    Filling silence with a sigh.

    Smile again, dear Love,
    Brighter day was never seen.
    Pull these blossoms for thy hair;
    Spring-time's joy is in the air,
    And all the land is green.



    Two Partings

    He said good-bye with laughing eyes,
    Too careless of me to be wise
    And see I grieved, since he must go.
    With weary tears, through night and day,
    In thought, I follow on his way,
    For he must go, and I must stay.
    —I dread the bitter winds that blow.

    Now time, at last, brings near a day
    When I must go, and he must stay,
    And I, like him, shall smile to go.
    And when he says good-bye to me,
    Although he weep, I shall not see,
    But if in thoughts he follow me,
    —He need not dread the winds that blow.



    Rose Song

    Plant, above my lifeless heart
    Crimson roses, red as blood.
    As if the love, pent there so long
    Were pouring forth its flood.

    Then, through them, my heart may tell,
    Its Past of Love and Grief,
    And I shall feel them grow from it,
    And know a vague relief.

    Through rotting shroud shall feel their roots,
    And unto them myself shall grow,
    And when I blossom at her feet,
    She, on that day, shall know!



    A New Year

    THY bride is waiting in the kirk,
    The wedding wine waits in thy hall.
    Adieu.
    For me, the stream's cold tide to drink,
    Where once we lingered at its brink,
    The kirk-yard waits thy Summer's work.
    Adieu.

    For her, the sweetest flowers that grow,
    For me, the faded Autumn grass,
    Adieu.
    For me, the dead leaves' tarnished gold.
    Ah, linger not, for once of old,
    Love, thou did'st stay when I said "Go!"
    Adieu.

    For her, the pearl wrought marriage-dress,
    The choir, the Mass, the ring of gold.
    Adieu.
    For me, the chants that night-birds sing.
    My hand in thine, I asked no ring,
    Nor blessed by love, the Church to bless.
    Adieu.

    For her, the wedding sheets are spread,
    For her, the cup of Love and Life.
    Adieu.
    For me, the cup of Love and Death.
    Then earth to earth, as the priest saith,
    My bed of love, and my last bed.
    Adieu.



    A Fete-Day

    They brought me snowy roses,
    A picture of my Saint,
    A little dove, whose tender note
    Was like a virgin's plaint.

    But you? You brought fierce kisses
    That caught my heart in snare,
    They crushed the snowy roses,
    That decked my throat and hair.

    The pictured Saint, in anguish,
    Gazed down from carven frame,
    And prayed, perhaps in heaven,
    For her who bears her name.

    The frightened dove moaned softly,
    With ruffled wing and crest.
    And never since will nestle
    As once, within my breast!


    In Exculpation

    You seared both eyes with kisses,
    And then bade me, blinded, go.
    Nor leave betraying foot-prints
    Upon your life's pure snow.

    Ah, Love, you should remember
    Ere you set blind captives free
    They cannot find the by-paths
    Who can no longer see!

    Ah, Love, 't was your cruel folly
    That set me journeying so,
    And hoped to find, thereafter,
    No foot-prints on the snow.



    The Rose of Flame

    God-like ignorance have they
    Who the voyage dare undertake.
    Yet men venture every day
    For the mystic Blossom's sake.
    Smile and weep for such as they,
    If perchance ye know the way.
    Smile for foe, and weep for friend,
    Strange the journey, sure its end.

    Through wide, twilight seas the course.
    He may start from any port.
    Fate alone stands at the helm,
    Be the sailing long or short.
    Night or day or weary week,
    Still she guides, and does not speak.
    No wild gale, or tempest's wrath
    Dares to cross his vessel's path.

    And what place of dreams is this,
    Where the keel slides in the sand?
    Never mortal's eyes but once
    Gaze on such a magic strand.
    The shore is veiled by mists of Shame
    Where grows the luring Rose of Flame.
    Bare sand, without a shrub or tree,
    And vapor white, and whispering sea.

    And now Fate holds him by the hand,
    And leads him inland, till no more
    The mist of Shame cleaves to the sand,
    And distant grows the sea and shore.
    Out of the desert, stretching bare,
    Come dizzy scents that load the air.
    Blindly and unfatigued he goes;
    He breathes the perfume of the Rose.

    Nearer—he feels the burning heat.
    Can desert hold a flower like this?
    He sees, is blinded by its glow;
    The scent is like a clinging kiss.
    The perfume deepens to a pang,
    And in his brain strange music sang,
    Such as lost Spirits sing in Hell.
    Then,—days,—or years; he best can tell.

    Withered, sere, and scorched at heart,
    He must seek the world once more.
    Never shall he sail again
    Through such seas, to touch such shore,
    And the memory of that strand
    Makes him loathe all other land,
    And no flower seems worth the name,
    Since he saw the Rose of Flame.

    Related pages: Romanticism Then and Now, Romanticism Defined, The Best Romantic Poetry, The Best Romantic Poets, American Sapphos
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    O Sing Fair Lady When With Me
    ------------------- By Pushkin

    O sing, fair lady, when with me Sad songs of Georgia no more:
    They bring into my memory Another life,
    a distant shore.

    Your beautiful,
    your cruel tune Brings to my memory,
    alas, The steppe, the night - and
    with the moon Lines of a far, unhappy lass.

    Forgetting at the sight of you That shadow fateful,
    shadow dear,
    I hear you singing - and anew
    I picture it before me, here.

    O sing, fair lady,
    when with me Sad songs of Georgia no more:
    They bring into my memory Another life, a distant shore.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Poems by Elinor Wylie

    Address to My Soul
    Atavism
    Cold Blooded Creatures
    A Crowded Trolley Car
    Epitaph


    Wild Peaches
    ---------- By Elinor Wylie
    1

    When the world turns completely upside down
    You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore
    Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;
    We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town,
    You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown
    Homespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold color.
    Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,
    We’ll swim in milk and honey till we drown.

    The winter will be short, the summer long,
    The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,
    Tasting of cider and of scuppernong;
    All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all.
    The squirrels in their silver fur will fall
    Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot.


    2

    The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass
    Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold.
    The misted early mornings will be cold;
    The little puddles will be roofed with glass.
    The sun, which burns from copper into brass,
    Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold
    Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold
    Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass.

    Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover;
    A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year;
    The spring begins before the winter’s over.
    By February you may find the skins
    Of garter snakes and water moccasins
    Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear.


    3

    When April pours the colors of a shell
    Upon the hills, when every little creek
    Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake
    In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell,
    When strawberries go begging, and the sleek
    Blue plums lie open to the blackbird’s beak,
    We shall live well — we shall live very well.

    The months between the cherries and the peaches
    Are brimming cornucopias which spill
    Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black;
    Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches
    We’ll trample bright persimmons, while you kill
    Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback.


    4

    Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones
    There’s something in this richness that I hate.
    I love the look, austere, immaculate,
    Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.
    There’s something in my very blood that owns
    Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,
    A thread of water, churned to milky spate
    Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.

    I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,
    Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves;
    That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath,
    Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,
    Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,
    And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

    ************************************************** ***

    Speed the Parting—

    --------- By Elinor Wylie
    I shall not sprinkle with dust
    A creature so clearly lunar;
    You must die—but of course you must—
    And better later than sooner.
    But if it should be in a year
    That year itself must perish;
    How dingy a thing is fear,
    And sorrow, how dull to cherish!
    And if it should be in a day
    That day would be dark by evening,
    But the morning might still be gay
    And the moon have golden leavening.
    And beauty’s a moonlight grist
    That comes to the mills of dying;
    The silver grain may be missed
    But there’s no great good in crying.
    Though luminous things are mould
    They survive in a glance that crossed them,
    And it’s not very kind to scold
    The empty air that has lost them.
    The limpid blossom of youth
    Turns into a poison berry;
    Having perceived this truth
    I shall not weep but be merry.
    Therefore die when you please;
    It’s not very wise to worry;
    I shall not shiver and freeze;
    I shall not even be sorry.
    Beautiful things are wild;
    They are gone, and you go after;
    Therefore I mean, my child,
    To charm your going with laughter.
    Love and pity are strong,
    But wisdom is happily greater;
    You will die, I suppose, before long,
    Oh, worser sooner than later!

    Elinor Wylie, “Speed the Parting—” from Selected Works of Elinor Wylie, edited by Evelyn Helmick Hively. Used with the permission of The Kent State University Press, http://upress.kent.edu/books/Hively2.htm.
    Source: Selected Works of Elinor Wylie (Kent State University Press, 2005)

    ************************************************** ****

    Elinor Wylie
    Poet Details
    1885–1928
    The Kent State University Press

    Extravagantly praised in her lifetime, the poet and novelist Elinor Wylie suffered a posthumous reversal in her reputation but has experienced something of a revival of interest among feminist critics since the 1980s.

    Wylie was born in Somerville, New Jersey to a socially prominent family, and grew up in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C. As the daughter of a lawyer who later became solicitor general of the United States, she was trained for the life of a debutante and a society wife, but she rebelled against that destiny and became notorious, in her time, for her multiple marriages and affairs. Her childhood was unhappy, according to Edward Kelly in the Dictionary of Literary Biography; her father had a mistress, her mother was a chronic hypochondriac, and at least one of her siblings, a brother, committed suicide. Another brother was rescued after jumping off a ship, and a sister died under equivocal circumstances. Wylie herself, although known for her beauty, suffered from dangerously high blood pressure all her adult life; it caused unbearable migraines, and would kill her by means of a stroke at the age of forty-three.

    Wylie's first marriage, to Philip Hichborn in 1905, occurred "on the rebound" from another romance, according to Karen F. Stein in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Hichborn, a would-be poet, was emotionally unstable, and it was during this period that Wylie's headaches began. In 1910, she left her husband and their son to escape to England with a married lawyer, Horace Wylie, under the assumed name of Waring; this event caused a scandal in the Washington, D.C., social circles Elinor Wylie had frequented. Encouraged by Horace Wylie, Elinor published privately, and anonymously, a small book of poems she had written since 1902, Incidental Numbers (1912). The couple returned to the United States at the outbreak of World War I, and lived in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C., under the stress of social ostracism and Elinor's illness. Wishing for a second child, she suffered several miscarriages between 1914 and 1916, as well as a stillbirth and the live birth of a premature child who died after one week.

    The Wylies did not officially marry until 1916, after Elinor's first husband had committed suicide and Horace's first wife had divorced him. By that time, however, the couple were drawing apart. Elinor Wylie began to move in literary circles in New York; her friends there numbered John Peale Bishop, Edmund Wilson, John Dos Passos, Sinclair Lewis, Carl Van Vechten, and her future third husband, William Rose Benet. Encouraged by her friends, she submitted poems to Poetry magazine despite her own self-doubts; four were published by Harriet Monroe in the May, 1920, edition, including her most widely anthologized poem, "Velvet Shoes."

    Benet had begun to act as informal literary agent for Wylie, and feeling the increasing pull of the literary world, she separated from Horace Wylie in 1921. Commented Stein in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "She captivated the literary world with her slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and technical virtuosity." However, Wylie was no salon dilettante; working hard, she published four volumes of poetry and four novels between 1921 and her death in 1928, in addition to writing some essays and reviews and working as a literary editor of prominent magazines such as Vanity Fair.

    In 1921, Wylie's volume Nets to Catch the Wind, which many critics still consider to contain her best poems, was issued. In addition to "Velvet Shoes," it contains the notable poems "August," "Wild Peaches," "A Proud Lady," "The Eagle and the Mole," "Sanctuary," "Winter Sleep," "Madman's Song," "The Church-Bell," and "A Crowded Trolley Car." Her poems were miniature in scope, displaying what Wylie in an essay called her "small clean technique." Stanzas and lines were quite short, and the effect of her images was of a highly detailed, polished surface. Often, her poems expressed a dissatisfaction with the realities of life on the part of a speaker who aspired to a more gratifying world of art and beauty. Nets to Catch the Wind "conveys a deep knowledge of life and evidences a mature talent," in the view of a Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism contributor; in its own time, it attracted the praise of poets such as Edna St. Vincent Millay and Louis Untermeyer.

    Nets to Catch the Wind was followed in 1923 by another successful volume of verse, Black Armour, which Stein in the Dictionary of Literary Biography viewed as exemplifying, and confessing, the limitations of Wylie's miniaturist method. An admirer of the British Romantic poets, and particularly of Shelley, to a degree that some critics have seen as abnormal, Wylie seemed to realize, nevertheless, that she was a genius of a lesser rank, one who could only create a "gilded bird" as opposed to Shelley's gloriously alive skylark. Stein, commenting that most of the personae in Black Armour are outcasts from society, interprets the work as self-pitying rather than maturely self-aware.

    In the same year as Black Armour, Wylie's first novel, Jennifer Lorn: A Sedate Extravaganza, was published to considerable acclaim: famously, the critic Carl Van Vechten organized a torchlight parade in Manhattan to celebrate its publication. The novel is a romantic pastiche set in Britain and India in the late 1700s; it encompasses the love and marriage of handsome, wealthy Gerald Poynyard and the fragile, beautiful Jennifer. Van Vechten hailed it as "the only successfully sustained satire in English." Modern critics, such as Kelly in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, are more prone to admire its lapidary passages of prose description and to express misgivings about its melodramatic plot and shaky structure; Alice R. Bensen, in the Reference Guide to American Literature, called it "a long catalogue of lovely, delicate objects."

    Wylie's second novel, The Venetian Glass Nephew (1925) is considered her best by Kelly for its unity of theme; however, many critics would assign that honor to her fourth novel, the 1928 Mr. Hodge and Mr. Hazard, of which Stein asserted, "Critics agree that this book is her best novel." In The Venetian Glass Nephew, a Roman Catholic cardinal seeks a nephew to whom he can bequeath his generosity. He is drawn to the lair of a glassblower who makes a handsome nephew for the cardinal out of glass. When a beautiful young woman falls in love with the artificial nephew and finds him unable to love in return, she volunteers to be turned into glass herself, in what Kelly terms "one of modern literature's rare reversals of the Pygmalion theme."

    Wylie's two later novels both express her idolatry of Shelley. In The Orphan Angel (1926), the great young poet is rescued from drowning off an Italian cape and travels to America, where he encounters the dangers of the frontier. Although the novel was a Book-of-the-Month selection in 1926, its critical and popular reception both were mixed. In retrospect, Kelly in the Dictionary of Literary Biography identified it as "her only failure," and Stein explained, "Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of kindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a picaresque exploration with minimal plot interest."

    Much more successful, says the consensus of critics, was Mr. Hodge and Mr. Hazard, which portrays the decline of a fictitious late-Romantic poet in an England clouded by the beginnings of Victorianism. Despite its historical setting, the novel contains characters and scenes that were recognizable to Wylie's friends. According to a Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism contributor, this novel "is a sensitive allegory of the poet's tragedy in a world indifferent to the artist's needs."

    Wylie's third volume of verse, Trivial Breath (1928), was dedicated to Shelley. It appeared at a time of personal upheaval. She had married Benet in 1923, but the marriage became strained, and the two agreed to live apart, Wylie moving to London. By 1927, she had already written to her second husband, Horace Wylie, of her enduring love for him. In 1928, she met a married man, Henry de Clifford Woodhouse, with whom she fell in love. This love inspired a series of nineteen sonnets, One Person, which she later included as the first section of Angels and Earthly Creatures (1928).

    These love poems seem, at times, to express an understanding that she had previously lacked genuine passion, and therefore to claim that she has achieved such a state; for this reason, some critics consider it her most mature poetry. This view is countered, however, by Thomas A. Gray in his 1969 study Elinor Wylie, who stated that "Wylie's later work . . . represents a reversal of the normal direction of development of a writer's art, in which his unique way of using language seems ever more the 'necessary and inevitable' expression of his individual way of seeing and feeling. . . . The 'new' way of speaking in One Person does not suggest any new way of feeling." It must be added, however, that Stein in the Dictionary of Literary Biography considered Gray's study "unsympathetic."

    A very different view was proposed in 1979 by Wylie's biographer Stanley Olson, who called the One Person sonnets "perhaps, her finest achievement. They are testimony to the power of her emotions, distilled and purified. . . . The love in these lyrics is not a private love, not a variety of confession, but an abstracted one, free of the protection of subjectivity. . . . The nineteen sonnets are paced with strength, energy and undeniable feeling, sustained as a group by shifting through the complexities and vicissitudes of love."

    It was while going over a typescript of Angels and Earthly Creatures, on a Christmas visit to Benet in New York in 1928, that Wylie died. Picking up a volume of John Donne's poems, she asked Benet for a glass of water; when he returned with it, as Stein recounted in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "she walked toward him, murmured, 'Is that all it is?,' and fell to the floor, dead of a stroke." Her reputation was kept high for a while by her surviving champions, but after the 1950s, both attention and esteem flagged. Assessing her poetry, Gray in 1969 wrote that it "is largely a portrayal of the stratagems by which a fragile sensibility shields itself from the threats and shocks of existence in a world too rough for it. . . . She forever draws attention away from what she is saying by the way in which she insists on saying it. This characteristic explains the thinness of her themes and the fragility of her style: in place of fresh perceptions, she very often gives an artificially posed personality and, in place of style, stylishness."

    Stein, in contrast, pointed respectfully to more than one passage of Wylie's verse in which the poet calls realistic attention to the disappointments of marriage and the contradictions and constrictions of traditional womanhood. Calling Wylie's gifts "notable, but problematic," Stein in the Dictionary of Literary Biography averred, "Inclusion of Wylie's poetry in recently published anthologies testifies to a continuing interest, and may hopefully lead to further examination of her poetry and prose." Kelly, appreciating Wylie's prose as "always clear and undigressive," reserved his greater admiration for her verse, and concluded, "Without doubt the poems and novels of Elinor Wylie can stand on their own, even if we do not know the tortured woman beneath the silver-cool facade of physical beauty."
    Bibliography
    POETRY

    (As anonymous) Incidental Numbers, privately printed (London), 1912.
    Nets to Catch the Wind, Harcourt, Brace (New York, NY), 1921.
    Black Armour, Doran (New York, NY), 1923.
    Trivial Breath, Knopf (New York City and London), 1928.
    Angels and Earthly Creatures: A Sequence of Sonnets (also known as One Person), privately printed, Borough Press (Henley on Thames, England), 1928.
    Angels and Earthly Creatures (includes Angels and Earthly Creatures: A Sequence of Sonnets), Knopf (New York City and London), 1929.
    Birthday Sonnet, Random House (New York, NY), 1929.
    Last Poems of Elinor Wylie, transcribed by Jane D. Wise, foreword by William Rose Benet, tribute by Edith Olivier, Knopf (New York City), 1943, Academy Chicago (Chicago), 1982.

    NOVELS

    Jennifer Lorn: A Sedate Extravaganza, Doran (New York, NY), 1923, Richards (London), 1924.
    The Venetian Glass Nephew, Doran, 1925, Academy Chicago, 1984.
    The Orphan Angel, Knopf (New York, NY), 1926, published as Mortal Image, Heinemann, 1927.
    Mr. Hodge & Mr. Hazard, Knopf (New York City) and Heinemann (London), 1928, Academy Chicago, 1984.

    COLLECTIONS

    Elinor Wylie, edited by Laurence Jordan, Simon & Schuster (New York City), 1926.
    Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie, Knopf (New York, NY), 1932.
    Collected Prose of Elinor Wylie, Knopf (New York, NY), 1933.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    On the Eclipse of the Moon of October, 1865

    One little noise of life remained--I heard
    The train pause in the distance, then rush by,
    Brawling and hushing, like some busy fly
    That murmurs and then settles; nothing stirred
    Beside. The shadow of our traveling earth
    Hung on the silver moon, which mutely went
    Through that grand process, without token sent,
    Or any sign to call a gazer forth,
    Had I not chanced to see; dumb was the vault
    Of heaven, and dumb the fields--no zephyr swept
    The forest walks, or through the coppice crept;
    Nor other sound the stillness did assault,
    Save that faint-brawling railway's move and halt;
    So perfect was the silence Nature kept.

    Charles Turner

    -------------------------------------------------------

    The Sonneteer to the Sea-Shell

    Fair ocean shell, the poet's art is weak
    To utter all thy rich variety!
    How thou dost shame him when he tries to speak,
    And tell his ear the rapture of his eye!
    I cannot paint as very truth requires
    The gold-green gleam that o'er thee breaks and roves,
    Nor follow up with words thy flying fires,
    Where'er the startled rose-light wakes and moves.
    Ah! why perplex with all thy countless hues
    The single-hearted sonnet? Fare thee well!
    I give thee up to some gay lyric muse,
    As fitful as thyself, thy tale to tell:
    The quick-spent sonnet cannot do thee right
    Nor in one flash deliver all thy light.

    Charles Turner

    --------------------------------------------------------

    We Cannot Keep Delight

    We cannot keep delight--we cannot tell
    One tale of steady bliss, unwarped, uncrost,
    The timid guest anticipates his farewell,
    And will not stay to hear it from his host!
    I saw a child upon a summer's day,
    A child upon the margin of a pond,
    Catch at the boughs that came within his way,
    >From a fair fruit-tree on the bank beyond;
    The gale that swayed them from him aye arose,
    And seldom sank into such kindly calm
    As gave his hand upon the bunch to close;
    Which then but left its fragrance on his palm;
    For the wind woke anew from its repose,
    And bore the fruit away, but wafted all its balm.

    Charles Turner

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Charles Tennyson Turner
    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Charles Tennyson Turner (4 July 1808 – 25 April 1879) was an English poet. Born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, he was an elder brother of Alfred Tennyson; his friendship and the "heart union" with his greater brother is revealed in Poems by Two Brothers (1829). Another poet brother was Frederick Tennyson.

    In 1833, Charles was ordained a priest in the Church of England. On 1 October 1835, he changed his surname to Turner after inheriting the estate of his great-uncle, the Reverend Samuel Turner of Caistor in Lincolnshire. On 24 May 1836, he married Louisa Sellwood, the younger sister of Alfred's future wife; she later suffered from mental illness and became an opium addict. Charles died on 25 April 1879, at the age of 70, at 6 Imperial Square in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.[1]

    Turner was key in the construction of Grasby, a small village on the outskirts of Caistor. He helped construct part of the school (Grasby School) and was the reverend of Grasby Church for a while.
    Published works

    Sonnets (1864)
    Small Tableaux (1868)
    Sonnets, Lyrics and Translations (1873)
    Collected Poems (1880, 8 months after death), assembled by Alfred and Hallam Tennyson, and James Spedding

    References
    Wikisource has original works written by or about:
    Charles Tennyson Turner

    This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wood, James, ed. (1907). "Turner, Charles Tennyson". The Nuttall Encyclopædia. London and New York: Frederick Warne.

    W. H. Auden - 'Family Ghosts' - Rev. Charles Turner [formerly Tennyson] (I10561)
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    June 13, 2017
    “Goya Could Have Painted This” by Douglas Blazek

    Douglas Blazek

    GOYA COULD HAVE PAINTED THIS

    Next door my neighbor
    massages his car with a mass
    of diapers and a fussy muscle.
    Fuels it spoon by spoon
    with wealthy gas to perfume its exhaust.
    Works his keyed-in personality
    to soothe a herd of ignition sparks.
    Drives his fantasies about his doubts
    as demons round a rosary.

    Trees in his hands are branchless pets.
    Roses succumb to the passion of fence.
    He pockets blocks of deadlocked stats.
    Calculates estates in a sea of distress.
    Stuck in logic to secure mere fact,
    his speech adds anchor to the ship he subtracts.

    I would rather eat hooks and electricity,
    chew a quarter mile of chrome,
    than live in this slum of prosperity,
    but wherever I am Mr. Everywhere goes.

    Goya could have painted this
    but not with a brush.
    Goya would have stretched our skull
    to the dull diode glow
    of a Sony canvas, then broadcast
    our monstrous success as Pavlovian
    reflex eating more resource
    to fill its abyss.

    —from Rattle #15, Summer 2001

    __________

    Douglas Blazek: “No matter how dramatic, facts require more than empathy to be relevant. Add them up and the sum is nothing the universe cannot rehash another way. Drop biography, and facts become more interesting. Poetry is the empathy that reveals the forces by plugging fact-flow into overview.”
    This modern poet writes verses I can feel, understand and acknowledge as having been born of great poetic talent.--Tyr
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Plea
    -----by Leslie Mellichamp

    O singer, sing to me—
    I know the world's awry—
    I know how piteously
    The hungry children cry—

    But I bleed warm and near,
    And come another dawn
    The world will still be here
    When home and hearth are gone.

    Formal poetry lost a staunch advocate when Leslie Mellichamp died on December 18, 2001. Editor of The Lyric, the oldest magazine in North America devoted to traditional poetry, he was the author of scores of poems, essays, and short stories that appeared in the 1950s and '60s in such places as the Atlantic, New York Times, Saturday Review, Ladies' Home Journal, and the Georgia Review. Believing with the gifted contributors who have kept The Lyric alive since 1921 that the roots of a living poetry lie in music and the common life, rather than in the fragmented bizarre, and that rhyme, structure, and lucidity are timeless attributes of enduring poetry, he offered his own lyrics as tributes to life's ancient ironies, the earth's patient resilience, the impudence of lovers, the wondrous eyes of children, and the cunning of that soft-shoed thief, Time. Below are a few of Leslie Mellichamp's poems, would that there had been more.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    A Garden Song
    - Poem by Henry Austin Dobson


    HERE in this sequester'd close
    Bloom the hyacinth and rose,
    Here beside the modest stock
    Flaunts the flaring hollyhock;
    Here, without a pang, one sees
    Ranks, conditions, and degrees.

    All the seasons run their race
    In this quiet resting-place;
    Peach and apricot and fig
    Here will ripen and grow big;
    Here is store and overplus,--
    More had not Alcinoüs!

    Here, in alleys cool and green,
    Far ahead the thrush is seen;
    Here along the southern wall
    Keeps the bee his festival;
    All is quiet else--afar
    Sounds of toil and turmoil are.

    Here be shadows large and long;
    Here be spaces meet for song;
    Grant, O garden-god, that I,
    Now that none profane is nigh,--
    Now that mood and moment please,--
    Find the fair Pierides!

    Henry Austin Dobson
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    After the Rain
    --- by Jared Carter

    After the rain, it’s time to walk the field
    again, near where the river bends. Each year
    I come to look for what this place will yield—
    lost things still rising here.

    The farmer’s plow turns over, without fail,
    a crop of arrowheads, but where or why
    they fall is hard to say. They seem, like hail,
    dropped from an empty sky,

    yet for an hour or two, after the rain
    has washed away the dusty afterbirth
    of their return, a few will show up plain
    on the reopened earth.

    Still, even these are hard to see—
    at first they look like any other stone.
    The trick to finding them is not to be
    too sure about what’s known;

    conviction’s liable to say straight off
    this one’s a leaf, or that one’s merely clay,
    and miss the point: after the rain, soft
    furrows show one way

    across the field, but what is hidden here
    requires a different view—the glance of one
    not looking straight ahead, who in the clear
    light of the morning sun

    simply keeps wandering across the rows,
    letting his own perspective change.
    After the rain, perhaps, something will show,
    glittering and strange.

    I admire this poem by the contemporary poet Jared Carter, especially its closing lines. This poem capitalizes on the poet's capacity for wonder.
    simply keeps wandering across the rows,
    letting his own perspective change.
    After the rain, perhaps, something will show,
    glittering and strange

    This reminds me, days in my youth, wandering across the field behind our home, after a hard rain and picking up Indian arrow heads on the farm.
    Imagining the lives of my ancestors and their hardships.-Tyr
    Last edited by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot; 07-31-2017 at 04:14 PM.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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