The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems by William Morris - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

By William Morris

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems by William Morris - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of William Morris’.

Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Morris includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

eBook features:
* The complete unabridged text of ‘The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems by William Morris - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’
* Beautifully illustrated with images related to Morris’s works
* Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
* Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Jul 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781788777094

William Morris

William Morris (1834-1896) was an English designer, poet, novelist, and socialist. Born in Walthamstow, Essex, he was raised in a wealthy family alongside nine siblings. Morris studied Classics at Oxford, where he was a member of the influential Birmingham Set. Upon graduating, he married embroiderer Jane Burden and befriended prominent Pre-Raphaelites Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. With Neo-Gothic architect Philip Webb, the founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, he designed the Red House in Bexleyheath, where he would live with his family from 1859 until moving to London in 1865. As a cofounder of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, & Co., he was one of the Victorian era’s preeminent interior decorators and designers specializing in tapestries, wallpaper, fabrics, stained glass, and furniture. Morris also found success as a writer with such works as The Earthly Paradise (1870), News from Nowhere (1890), and The Well at the World’s End (1896). A cofounder of the Socialist League, he was a committed revolutionary socialist who played a major part in the growing acceptance of Marxism and anarchism in English society.

Book preview

The Complete Works of

WILLIAM MORRIS

VOLUME 18 OF 45

The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems

Parts Edition

By Delphi Classics, 2015

Version 1

COPYRIGHT

‘The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems’

William Morris: Parts Edition (in 45 parts)

First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

© Delphi Classics, 2017.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 78877 709 4

Delphi Classics

is an imprint of

Delphi Publishing Ltd

Hastings, East Sussex

United Kingdom

Contact: [e-mail]

www.delphiclassics.com

William Morris: Parts Edition

This eBook is Part 18 of the Delphi Classics edition of William Morris in 45 Parts. It features the unabridged text of The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of William Morris, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of William Morris or the Complete Works of William Morris in a single eBook.

Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here.

WILLIAM MORRIS

IN 45 VOLUMES

Parts Edition Contents

The Novels

1, A Dream of John Ball

2, The House of the Wolfings

3, The Roots of the Mountains

4, News from Nowhere

5, The Story of the Glittering Plain

6, The Wood Beyond the World

7, Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair

8, The Well at the World’s End

9, The Water of the Wondrous Isles

10, The Sundering Flood

11, The Novel on Blue Paper

The Shorter Fiction

12, Introduction to the Fantasy Short Stories of Morris

13, The Hollow Land

14, A King’s Lesson

15, Golden Wings and Other Stories

16, The Folk of the Mountain Door

The Play

17, The Tables Turned; Or, Nupkins Awakened

The Poetry Collections

18, The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems

19, The Life and Death of Jason

20, The Earthly Paradise

21, Love Is Enough

22, The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs

23, The Pilgrims of Hope

24, Chants for Socialists

25, Alfred Linnell, Killed in Trafalgar Square. a Death Song

26, Poems by the Way

27, Unpublished Poems and Fragments

The Translations

28, Grettis Saga

29, The Saga of Gunnlaug the Worm-Tongue and Rafn the Skald

30, Völsung Saga

31, Three Northern Love Stories, and Other Tales

32, The Odyssey of Homer Done Into English Verse

33, The Aeneids of Virgil Done Into English

34, The Tale of Beowulf Done Out of the Old English Tongue

35, The Ordination of Knighthood

36, Old French Romances Done Into English

The Non-Fiction

37, Signs of Change

38, Preface to ‘Arts and Crafts Essays by Members of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society’

39, Hopes and Fears for Art

40, Preface to ‘Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus’

41, The Art and Craft of Printing

Designs

42, Morris & Co. Textile Designs

43, Morris & Co. Stained Glass Designs

44, Oil Painting

The Biography

45, The Life of William Morris by John William Mackail

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The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems

This poetry collection was first published in 1857 and was largely self-funded. It sold poorly and the negative reviews put Morris off publishing further poems for eight years. Based largely on an episode in Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (demonstrating Morris’ predilection for mediaeval subject matter) the poem is a dramatic monologue from the point of view of Guenevere, the wife of King Arthur, who defends herself after being accused of adultery with the King’s trusted knight, Sir Launcelot. Morris’ use of archaic terms is characteristic of his medievalism – and the poem itself is part of a wider Victorian tendency to see the mediaeval period as one of a lost pre-industrial simplicity. Yet, there is also a trace of the more modern influence of Tennyson in the poem’s complex imagery and psychological insight – as well as the use of the dramatic monologue, a form invented by Morris’ contemporary, Robert Browning.

Title page of the first edition

CONTENTS

THE DEFENCE OF GUENEVERE

KING ARTHUR’S TOMB

SIR GALAHAD, A CHRISTMAS MYSTERY

THE CHAPEL IN LYONESS

SIR PETER HARPDON’S END

RAPUNZEL

CONCERNING GEFFRAY TESTE NOIRE

A GOOD KNIGHT IN PRISON

OLD LOVE

THE GILLIFLOWER OF GOLD

SHAMEFUL DEATH

THE EVE OF CRECY

THE JUDGMENT OF GOD

THE LITTLE TOWER

THE SAILING OF THE SWORD

SPELL-BOUND

THE WIND

THE BLUE CLOSET

THE TUNE OF SEVEN TOWERS

GOLDEN WINGS

THE HAYSTACK IN THE FLOODS

TWO RED ROSES ACROSS THE MOON

WELLAND RIVER

RIDING TOGETHER

FATHER JOHN’S WAR-SONG

SIR GILES’ WAR-SONG

NEAR AVALON

PRAISE OF MY LADY

SUMMER DAWN

IN PRISON

A page from the later Kelmscott Press edition of 1892

THE DEFENCE OF GUENEVERE

But, knowing now that they would have her speak,

She threw her wet hair backward from her brow,

Her hand close to her mouth touching her cheek,

As though she had had there a shameful blow,

And feeling it shameful to feel ought but shame

All through her heart, yet felt her cheek burned so,

She must a little touch it; like one lame

She walked away from Gauwaine, with her head

Still lifted up; and on her cheek of flame

The tears dried quick; she stopped at last and said:

O knights and lords, it seems but little skill

To talk of well-known things past now and dead.

God wot I ought to say, I have done ill,

And pray you all forgiveness heartily!

Because you must be right, such great lords; still

Listen, suppose your time were come to die,

And you were quite alone and very weak;

Yea, laid a dying while very mightily

The wind was ruffling up the narrow streak

Of river through your broad lands running well:

Suppose a hush should come, then some one speak:

‘One of these cloths is heaven, and one is hell,

Now choose one cloth for ever; which they be,

I will not tell you, you must somehow tell

Of your own strength and mightiness; here, see!’

Yea, yea, my lord, and you to ope your eyes,

At foot of your familiar bed to see

A great God’s angel standing, with such dyes,

Not known on earth, on his great wings, and hands,

Held out two ways, light from the inner skies

Showing him well, and making his commands

Seem to be God’s commands, moreover, too,

Holding within his hands the cloths on wands;

And one of these strange choosing cloths was blue,

Wavy and long, and one cut short and red;

No man could tell the better of the two.

After a shivering half-hour you said:

‘God help! heaven’s colour, the blue;’ and he said, ‘hell.’

Perhaps you then would roll upon your bed,

And cry to all good men that loved you well,

‘Ah Christ! if only I had known, known, known;’

Launcelot went away, then I could tell,

Like wisest man how all things would be, moan,

And roll and hurt myself, and long to die,

And yet fear much to die for what was sown.

Nevertheless you, O Sir Gauwaine, lie,

Whatever may have happened through these years,

God knows I speak truth, saying that you lie.

Her voice was low at first, being full of tears,

But as it cleared, it grew full loud and shrill,

Growing a windy shriek in all men’s ears,

A ringing in their startled brains, until

She said that Gauwaine lied, then her voice sunk,

And her great eyes began again to fill,

Though still she stood right up, and never shrunk,

But spoke on bravely, glorious lady fair!

Whatever tears her full lips may have drunk,

She stood, and seemed to think, and wrung her hair,

Spoke out at last with no more trace of shame,

With passionate twisting of her body there:

It chanced upon a day that Launcelot came

To dwell at Arthur’s court: at Christmas-time

This happened; when the heralds sung his name,

Son of King Ban of Benwick, seemed to chime

Along with all the bells that rang that day,

O’er the white roofs, with little change of rhyme.

Christmas and whitened winter passed away,

And over me the April sunshine came,

Made very awful with black hail-clouds, yea

And in the Summer I grew white with flame,

And bowed my head down: Autumn, and the sick

Sure knowledge things would never be the same,

However often Spring might be most thick

Of