List of Morris's Poems of the Earthly Paradise Period: Lyrics, Fragments, and Unused Earthly Paradise Narratives
The following is a list of known Morris poems and drafts written between 1865-74, with transcriptions of the text of poems not included in CW or AWS and alternate versions. A list of early drafts of Earthly Paradise tales is found in "Morris' Drafts for the Earthly Paradise."
Table of Contents
A. Poems and fragments from B. L. Add. Ms. 45,298A, ff. 86-126
B. Poems and Fragments Preserved Only in Copyist’s hand in B. M.
Add. Ms. 45,298B
A. Poems and fragments from B. L. Add. Ms. 45,298A, ff. 86-126.
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A-1. “Rhyme Slayeth Shame” ( If as I come unto her she might hear, / If words might reach her when away I go, )
*A-2. “Dear if God praise thee much for many a thing”
A-3. “As This Thin Thread” ( As this thin thread on thy dear neck shall lie )
A-4. “The Doomed Ship” ( The doomed ship drives on helpless through the sea, )
A-5. “Near But Far Away” ( She wavered, stopped, and turned; methought her eyes, )
A-6. “May Grown A-Cold” ( O certainly, no month is this but May! )
*A-7. “Lonely Love and Loveless Death” ( O have I been hearkening / To some dread newcomer? )
*A-8. “Everlasting Spring” ( O my love my darling, / what is this men say )
A-11. Song: “Twas one little word that wrought it” ( Refrain: Half-forgotten, unforgiven and alone. )
A-12. Song: “Our Hands Have Met” ( Our hands have met, our lips have met )
A-13. “Why Dost Thou Struggle” ( Why dost thou struggle, strive for victory )
A-14. “Fair Weather and Foul” ( Speak not, move not, but listen, the sky is full of
gold, )A-15. “O Far Away to Seek” ( O far away to seek, close-hid for heart to find, )
*A-16. “O land sore torn and riven”
A-17. “We loosed from the quays on a Friday”
*A-18. “Thus have I told many ways of the dealings of prudence with men”
*A-19. “Peevish and weak and fretful do I pray”
*A-20. “Deep Sea, mighty wonder.” A stanza from “Earth the Healer, Earth the Keeper.”
*A-21. Dramatic fragment containing King, Oliver, Sir Walter and Yoland (“Well put thy case and more than one of us”)
*A-22. "Thous hast it then the pouch"
A-23. “Sad-eyed and soft and grey thou art, O morn!”
*A-24 "So I rose and felt my feet on the daisied grass in a while"
*A-25. "Thus have I told many ways of the dealings of prudence with men"
B. Poems and Fragments Preserved Only in Copyist’s hand in B. M. Add. Ms. 45,298B
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*B-1. “Alone unhappy by the fire I sat”
B-2. Three Chances and One Answer ( O love, if all the pleasures of the earth )
B-3. Song from Orpheus: “While agone my words had wings”
B-4. Song from Orpheus: “O ye who sit alone, and bend above the earth”
B-5. Song from Orpheus: “Once a white house there was”
B-6. Song from Orpheus: “O if ye laugh, then am I grown”
B-7. Song from Orpheus: “O my love how could it be”
*B-8. “They have no song, the sedge is dry”
C-1: Sad-eyed and soft and grey thou art, O morn
C. Other Morris Poems
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*C-1a. "Praise of Venus" ( Before our lady came on earth/ Little there was of joy or
mirth )*C-2. “Dorothea”
*C-3. “O fair gold goddess”
C-4. “What All Men Long For and What None Shall Have” ( Bare is the world and waste and wide )C-5. “Praise of Wine” (“The sun grows dim and the day waxes old” )
C-6. “Hapless Love” ( Haec: Why do you sadly go alone / O fair friend? )
C-7. Love Is Enough
C-8. French Noel: Masters in This Hall ( Masters in this Hall /Hear ye news today )
C-9. Song for Orpheus: “O love, love, love, folk told me thou wert dead”
C-10. Song for Orpheus: “O hollow image of the very death”
C-11. Song for Cupid and Psyche (two voices, Haec and Ille) ( Haec: O love, in songs
thou lovest me, )C-12. “The Wanderers,” first version. ( Oho! Oho! Whence come ye, Sirs, /Drifted to usward in such guise, )
C-13. “The Story of Aristomenes” ( Nigh twenty years had the Messenian folk / Striven to free them from the Spartan yoke )
C-14. “The Story of Orpheus and Eurydice” ( Down in the south Laconian country-side / About mount Tenarus, a wood spreads wide )
C-15. “Meeting in Winter” ( Winter in the world it is / Round about the unhoped kiss )
C-16. “The Wooing of Swanhild” ( A king of the Goths there was as tells my tale / Men called Hermenaric, a man of might )
C-17. A Garden By the Sea” ( I know a little garden-close / Set thick with lily and red rose, )
C-18. “In Arthur’s House” ( In Arthur’s house whilome was I / When happily the time went by )
C-20. Written in a copy of The Earthly Paradise, December 25, 1870 ( So many stories written here / And none among them but doth bear )
C-21. Verses for the Months, The Earthly Paradise, March, April, May.
C-22. Verses for the Months, The Earthly Paradise, January, February, March.
C-23. “The Mother Under the Mould” ( Svend Dyring rode on the island-way / Yea have not I myself been young )
C-24. “Error and Loss” ( Upon an eve I sat me down and wept, / Because the world to me seemed nowise good; )
C-25. “Of The Three Seekers” ( There met three knights on the woodland way, / And the first was clad in silk array: )
C-26. “Iceland First Seen” ( Lo from our loitering ship a new land at last to be seen; / Toothed rocks on the side of the firth on the east guard a weary wide lea, )
C-27. “Love’s Gleaning-Tide” ( Draw not away thy hands, my love: )
C-28. “The Raven and the King’s Daughter” ( King’s daughter sitting in a tower so high, / Fair summer is on many a shield. )
C-29. “The God of the Poor” ( There was a lord that hight Maltete, / Among great lords he was right great, )
C-30. “The Two Sides of the River” ( The Youths: O winter, O white winter wert thou gone / No more within the wilds were I alone )
C-31. “On the Edge of the Wilderness” ( Puellae. Whence comest thou, and whither goest thou? / Abide! Abide! Longer the shadows grow; )
C-32. “Love Fulfilled” ( Hast thou longed through weary days / For the sight of one loved face? )
C-33. “Pain and Time Strive Not” ( What part of the dread eternity / Are those strange minutes that I gain, )
C-34. “Love’s Reward” ( It was a knight of the southern land / Rode forth upon the
way )C-35. “Verses for Pictures: The Seasons: Day. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter.
Night )” ( Day. I am Day; I bring again / Life and glory, Love and pain: )C-36. “Echoes of Love’s House” ( Love gives every gift whereby we long to live / Love takes every gift, and nothing back doth give )
C-37. “Of the Wooing of Hallbiorn the Strong” ( A story from the Land-Settling Book of Iceland, Chapter XXX. At Deildar-Tongue in the autumn-tide, / So many times comes summer again, )
C-38. “The King of Denmark’s Sons” ( In Denmark gone is many a year; / So fair upriseth the rim of the sun, )
C-39. “To the Muse of the North” ( O muse that swayest the sad Northern Song, / Thy right hand full of smiting and of wrong )
C-40. “Spring’s Bedfellow” ( Spring went about the woods to-day, / The soft-foot winter-thief, And found where idle sorrow lay )
C-41. “Gunnar’s Howe Above the House at Lithend” ( Ye who have come o’er the sea / to behold this grey minster of lands, / Whose floor is the tomb of the past, / and whose walls by the toil of dead hands )
C-42. “Envoi” to Eyrbyggia Saga ( Tale teller, who twixt fire and snow )
C-44. “Guileful Love” ( “Love set me in a flowery garden fair / Love showed me many marvels moving there” )
C-45. “The End of May” ( How the wind howls this morn / About the end of May, )
C-46. “Come hearken dreams and marvels of the days when earth was young”
*C-47. Icelandic fragment, “A land of deep snows and scarcely hidden fire”
C-48. Interlinking lyric for "The Deeds of Jason" ( Now must we tell what life those old men had )
C-49. Lyric from “Bellerophon in Lycia”
C-50. Verses for June and July, The Earthly Paradise
C-51. Sonnet at beginning of Grettir ( A life scarce worth the living, a poor fame / Scarce worth the wining, in a wretched land. )
*C-52. Second sonnet for Grettir
C-53. “Thunder in the Garden” ( When the boughs of the garden hang heavy with rain / And the blackbird reneweth his song, )
C-54. “From the Upland to the Sea” ( Shall we wake one morn of spring / Glad at heart of everything )
C-55. First draft of a Prologue in verse to The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs
C-56. Fragment: “Birdling, whither away,” unidentified.
C-57. Fragment: “So hearken my doom then if thou sin,” unidentified.
C-58. Love and Death ( In the white-flowered hawthorn brake / Love is merry for my sake; )
C-59. “Rest from Seeking” ( O weary seeker over land and sea / O heart that cravest love perpetually, )
C-60. “Sundering Summer" ( Fair is the night and fair the day / Now April is forgot of May, )
C-61. “Such words the summer air swept past his ears”
C-62. "The Weariness of November" ( Are Thine Eyes Weary? )
C-63. October lyric of The Earthly Paradise
C-64. "The Fears of June" ( Fair was the morn today, the blossomed scent / Floated across the fresh grass, and the bees, )
C-65. "The Shows of May" ( O love, this morn when the sweet nightingale / Had so long finished all he had to say)
C-66. "The Birth of June" ( How the wind howls this morn / about the end of May )
C-67. "The Ballad of Christine" ( Of silk my gown was shapen, / Scarlet they did
on me )*C-68. “Dead and gone is all desire”
C-69. Poems by the Way
D-1. Poems interspersed throughout The Story of Grettir the Strong
Poems are found in chapters 3-4, 9, 11-12, 14, 16-19, 21-22, 24, 27-28, 31, 40, 47-48, 52, 54, 57, 59, 61-63, 66, 74, 77, 82, 86, 92.
