William Morris was born in London, England in 1834. Arguably best known as a textile designer, he founded a design partnership which deeply influenced the decoration of churches and homes during the early 20th century. However, he is also considered an important Romantic writer and pioneer of the modern fantasy genre, being a direct influence on authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien. As well as fiction, Morris penned poetry and essays. Amongst his best-known works are The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858), The Earthly Paradise (1868–1870), A Dream of John Ball (1888), News from Nowhere (1890), and the fantasy romance The Well at the World’s End (1896). Morris was also an important figure in British socialism, founding the Socialist League in 1884. He died in 1896, aged 62.

THE MESSAGE OF THE MARCH WIND

Fair now is the springtide, now earth lies beholding

With the eyes of a lover the face of the sun;

Long lasteth the daylight, and hope is enfolding

The green-growing acres with increase begun.

Now sweet, sweet it is through the land to be straying

Mid the birds and the blossoms and the beasts of the field;

Love mingles with love, and no evil is weighing

On thy heart or mine, where all sorrow is healed.

From township to township, o’er down and by tillage

Far, far have we wandered and long was the day,

But now cometh eve at the end of the village,

Where over the grey wall the church riseth grey.

There is wind in the twilight; in the white road before us

The straw from the ox-yard is blowing about;

The moon’s rim is rising, a star glitters o’er us,

And the vane on the spire-top is swinging in doubt.

Down there dips the highway, toward the bridge crossing over

The brook that runs on to the Thames and the sea.

Draw closer, my sweet, we are lover and lover;

This eve art thou given to gladness and me.

Shall we be glad always? Come closer and hearken:

Three fields further on, as they told me down there,

When the young moon has set, if the March sky should darken,

We might see from the hill-top the great city’s glare.

Hark, the wind in the elm-boughs! From London it bloweth,

And telling of gold, and of hope and unrest;

Of power that helps not; of wisdom that knoweth,

But teacheth not aught of the worst and the best.

Of the rich men it telleth, and strange is the story

How they have, and they hanker, and grip far and wide;

And they live and they die, and the earth and its glory

Has been but a burden they scarce might abide.

Hark! the March wind again of a people is telling;

Of the life that they live there, so haggard and grim,

That if we and our love amidst them had been dwelling

My fondness had faltered, thy beauty grown dim.

This land we have loved in our love and our leisure

For them hangs in heaven, high out of their reach;

The wide hills o’er the sea-plain for them have no pleasure,

The grey homes of their fathers no story to teach.

The singers have sung and the builders have builded,

The painters have fashioned their tales of delight;

For what and for whom hath the world’s book been gilded,

When all is for these but the blackness of night?

How long and for what is their patience abiding?

How oft and how oft shall their story be told,

While the hope that none seeketh in darkness is hiding

And in grief and in sorrow the world groweth old?

Come back to the inn, love, and the lights and the fire,

And the fiddler’s old tune and the shuffling of feet;

For there in a while shall be rest and desire,

And there shall the morrow’s uprising be sweet.

Yet, love, as we wend the wind bloweth behind us

And beareth the last tale it telleth to-night,

How here in the spring-tide the message shall find us;

For the hope that none seeketh is coming to light.

Like the seed

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