rlinck from his general indifference to contemporary
writers--Maeterlinck, like himself, a student of Rossetti. There is no
other collection of English poems so saturated with Pre-Raphaelitism.
The flowers are all orchids, strange in shape, violent in colouring.
Rapunzel, _e.g._, is like one of Maeterlinck's spellbound princesses.
She stands at the top of her tower, letting down her hair to the ground,
and her lover climbs up to her by it as by a golden stair. Here is again
the singular Pre-Raphaelite and symbolistic scenery, with its images from
art and not from nature. Tall damozels in white and scarlet walk in
garths of lily and sunflower, or under apple boughs, and feed the swans
in the moat.

"Moreover, she held scarlet lilies, such
As Maiden Margaret bears upon the light
Of the great church walls." [40]

"Lord, give Mary a dear kiss,
And let gold Michael, who look'd down,
When I was there, on Rouen town,
From the spire, bring me that kiss
On a lily!" [41]

The language is as artfully quaint as the imaginations are fantastic:

"Between the trees a large moon, the wind lows
Not loud, but as a cow begins to low." [42]

"Pale in the green sky were the stars, I ween,
Because the moon shone like a star she shed
When she dwelt up in heaven a while ago,
And ruled all things but God." [43]

"Quiet groans
That swell out the little bones
Of my bosom." [44]

"I sit on a purple bed,
Outside, the wall is red,
Thereby the apple hangs,
And the wasp, caught by the fangs,
Dies in the autumn night.
And the bat flits till light,
And the love-crazed knight
Kisses the long, wet grass." [45]

A number of these pieces are dramatic in form, monologues or dialogues,
sometimes in the manner of the mediaeval mystery plays.[46] Others are
ballads, not of the popular variety, but after Rossetti's fashion,
employing burdens, English or French:

"Two red roses across the moon";

"Hah! hah! la belle jaune giroflee";

"Ah! qu'elle est belle La Marguerite"; etc.

The only poem in the collection which imitates the style of the old
minstrel ballad is "Welland Water." The name-poem is in _terza rima_;
the longest, "Sir Peter Harpdon's End," in blank verse; "Golden Wings,"
in the "In Memoriaro" stanza.

When Morris again came before the public as a poet, his style had
undergone a change akin to that which transformed the Pre-Raphaelite
pai