k
which one feels in reading these poems comes from Morris' dislike of
rhetoric and moralising, the two main nerves of eighteenth-century verse.
Left to themselves, these make sad work of poetry; yet poetry includes
eloquence, and life includes morality. The poetry of Morris is sensuous,
as upon the whole poetry should be; but in his resolute abstention from
the generalizing habit of the previous century, the balance is lost
between the general and the concrete, which all really great poetry
preserves. Byron declaims and Wordsworth moralises, both of them perhaps
too much; yet in the end to the advantage of their poetry, which is full
of truths, or of thoughts conceived as true, surcharged with emotion and
uttered with passionate conviction. One looks in vain in Morris' pages
for such things as

"There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away";

or

"--the good die first,
----And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust,
Burn to the socket."

Such coin of universal currency is rare in Morris, as has once before
been said. Not that quotability is an absolute test of poetic value, for
then Pope would rank higher than Spenser or Shelley. But its absence in
Morris is significant in more than one way.

While "The Earthly Paradise" was in course of composition, a new
intellectual influence came into Morris' life, the influence of the
Icelandic sagas. Much had been done to make Old Norse literature
accessible to English readers since the days when Gray put forth his
Runic scraps and Percy translated Mallet.[53] Walter Scott, e.g., had
given an abstract of the "Eyrbyggja Saga." Amos Cottle had published at
Bristol in 1797 a metrical version of the mythological portion of the
"Elder Edda" ("Icelandic Poetry, or the Edda of Saemund"), with an
introductory verse epistle by Southey. Sir George Dasent's translation
of the "Younger Edda" appeared in 1842; Laing's "Heimskringla" in 1844;
Dasent's "Burnt Nial" in 1861; his "Gisli the Outlaw," and Head's "Saga
of Viga-Glum" in 1866. William and Mary Howitt's "Literature and Romance
of Northern Europe" appeared in 1852. Morris had made the acquaintance
of Thorpe's "Northern Mythology" (1851) and "Yuletide Stories" (1853) at
Oxford; two of the tales in "The Earthly Paradise" were suggested by
them: "The Land East of the Sun" and "The Fostering of Aslaug." These,
however, he had dealt with independently and in an ultra-romantic spirit.
B