Part 8

There is, however, a difficulty of another kind in this opening book. The quality of all others in the _Völsunga Saga_ that fits it for the highest poetry is its elemental humanity, and it was this that stirred Morris most deeply and inspired his most memorable work, here as elsewhere. The Sigmund Story of the Saga, however, is as much savage as human, and savage not with the primal fierceness of man but with the terrible and implacable caprice of a malign, or at least inhuman Fate. Here, as later in the poem, that Fate is embodied in the figure of Odin, but there is a profound difference. When Sigurd has slain Fafnir and found Brynhild on Hindfell, the humanity of the story reacts perfectly clearly upon the Fate that overshadows all. The Fate loses none of its power, but it is humanized, mellowed, and as it were made tolerable by taking into itself something of the human spirit of love. In the Sigmund book there is none of this, and, indeed, the same is to be said of the second book called Regin. Until Sigurd himself begins to control the story, the characters are in constant peril of being swung out of their courses by some fierce stroke of the gods, meaningless and wholly unrelated to anything in themselves. It is a supportable argument to advance that this happens in life, but the answer is that it should not happen in great art. Morris's difficulty was, of course, that he was loth to interfere with the story as it came to him in the Saga, but I cannot help feeling that he here allowed his loyalty in some measure to betray his artistic instinct. It was just one of those supreme difficulties that face only the men who are attempting supreme ends. _Sigurd The Volsung_ as it stands ranks with the masterpieces of which the countless millions of men have but created a score or so between them. The Sigmund book was essential to his epic; had Morris been able to retain the terror of the Saga and yet invest it more fully with the primal impulse of humanity, it is not easy to point to any product of man that would have been clearly entitled to rank above this poem.

In speaking of a thing for which we have the deepest reverence, we would be very clear. The books of Sigmund and Regin, as Morris has given them to us, remain the poetry of a great poet. Whole passages rise to a height as to which there can be no question. The first lines of the poem are enough to satisfy any intelligence that knows what epic poetry is that here we are to be in the presence of fine issues finely wrought--

There was a dwelling of Kings ere the world was waxen old; Dukes were the door-wards there, and the roofs were thatched with gold; Earls were the wrights that wrought it, and silver nailed its doors: Earls' wives were the weaving-women, queens' daughters strewed its floors. And the masters of its song-craft were the mightiest men that cast The sails of the storm of battle adown the bickering blast. There dwelt men merry-hearted, and in hope exceeding great Met the good days and the evil as they went the way of fate, There the gods were unforgotten, yea whiles they walked with men, Though e'en in that world's beginning rose a murmur now and again Of the midward time and the fading and the last of the latter days, And the entering in of the terror, and the death of the People's Praise:

and the greatness of the poem is manifested long before the finding of Brynhild. But up to that point there is lacking in the spirit of the work as a whole that sense of the inevitable and logical cause and effect in the weaving of human destiny that gives so marvellous a strength to the books called Brynhild and Gudrun.

The plan of the poem seems to me, then, to be perfectly wrought, and the treatment of one part of it not so instinctively right as that of the rest, which is beyond all criticism. As to the actual workmanship apart from the design, the general examination of Morris's methods which has already been made in an earlier chapter covers its main characteristics. But there are qualities here which were not found in _Jason_ or _The Earthly Paradise_. There was in those poems an extraordinary ease and at the same time an indication of a titanic strength in reserve. In _Sigurd_ this reserve is used, but all the ease is, by some superb paradox of artistic power, retained. The hewn rocks and the cloud-wrack of Iceland, the great thews of Sigurd and the might of his god-given sword, the proud beauty of the deep-bosomed women who are the mates and mothers of fierce and terrible kings, all these things are sung with a vigour as tremendous as is their own, and yet there is not a strained moment or an uncontrolled turn of expression from beginning to end. And, save in places where the substance of the story itself momentarily excludes it, there is always beauty in the strength. Again we have but to read a page or two into the poem to find an example. Sensuous beauty and fiery strength could not well be more perfectly blended than in this description of the Volsung throne under the Branstock:--

So there was the throne of Volsung beneath its blossoming bower, But high o'er the roof-crest red it rose 'twixt tower and tower; And therein were the wild hawks dwelling, abiding the dole of their lord, And they wailed high over the wine, and laughed to the waking sword.

And again, when Sigurd is singing in the Niblung hall:--

But his song and his fond desire go up to the cloudy roof, And blend with the eagles' shrilling in the windy night aloof.

It is at the end of the book of Regin that Sigurd finds Brynhild asleep

on the tower-top of the world, High over the cloud-wrought castle whence the windy bolts are hurled;

and from the moment he awakens her new light and life break into the narrative. Not only in their troth-plighting is a new note of human passion struck, but the Volsung spirit in Sigurd undergoes a change and takes on a larger charity and a more beneficent purpose.

So the day grew old about them and the joy of their desire, And eve and the sunset came, and faint grew the sunset fire, And the shadowless death of the day, was sweet in the golden tide; But the stars shone forth on the world and the twilight changed and died; And sure if the first of man-folk had been born to that starry night, And had heard no tale of the sunrise, he had never longed for the light: But Earth longed amidst her slumber, as 'neath the night she lay, And fresh and all abundant abode the deeds of Day.

And these abundant deeds of day are deeds of peace and healing. Sigurd among Hemir and his 'Lymdale forest lords' brings the dawn of a new age, when

The axe-age and the sword-age seem dead a while ago, And the age of the cleaving of shields, of brother by brother slain, And the bitter days of the whoredom, and the hardened lust of gain; But man to man may hearken, and he that soweth reaps, And hushed is the heart of Feurir in the wolf-den of the deeps...

and again, when he rides to the Niblungs it is with peace and comfortable words upon his lips--

For peace I bear unto thee, and to all the kings of earth Who bear the sword aright, and are crowned with the crown of worth; But unpeace to the lords of evil, and the battle and the death; And the edge of the sword to the traitor, and the flame to the slanderous breath: And I would that the loving were loved, and I would that the weary should sleep, And that man should hearken to man, and that he that soweth should reap. Now wide in the world I fare, to seek the dwellings of kings, For with them would I do and undo, and be heart of their warfarings; So I thank thee, lord, for thy bidding, and here in thy house will I bide, And learn of thy ancient wisdom till forth to the field we ride.

It is in this mellowing of the fierce Volsung strain that the redemption of the cosmic spirit of the epic is found. To show this is a purpose not less noble than that of Milton when he robed himself to justify the ways of God to man, and it is one which must be clearly understood before we can hope to grasp the imaginative impulse that runs as a central thread through all the coloured jewels of Morris's masterpiece. This new chastening of the humanity in Sigurd not only makes the life among which he moves sweeter, but it reacts upon the most tragic judgments of the gods. Nothing could be finer than the way in which we are shown the ennobling influence that it has upon so terrible an event as the betrayal of Sigurd by the Niblung Gunnar and his brothers. It is an act of the blackest treachery, a violation of sacred vows sworn under the roof-tree of their home, an act which in the world of Sigmund would have been merely horrible. But here it is transfigured by the elemental humanity working along the logical ways of cause and effect in the heart of Sigurd and from him into the action of his betrayers, into pure tragedy. Before this quickening, enmity between man and man was a sullen and savage thing, some blinding of their eyes by the hands of mocking gods, but now it springs from the clear conflict of essential emotions and it has in it a new element of pity. Gunnar knows that the ravelled web can be straightened only in this way, but there is no loveless exultation in his mood, and in after days he cherishes the great memory of the man whom he has slain. And Sigurd knows of the coming end, but there is no hatred in him--

the heart of Hogin he sees, And the heart of his brother Gunnar, _and he grieveth sore for these_.

In detail Morris discovers a wealth of inventiveness that appears to be inexhaustible. He never allows his beauty of expression to be isolated in such a way as to interfere with the swiftness of narration, but there are many more instances of separable splendours in _Sigurd_ than in any other of his poems. When Sigurd tells King Elf, his stepfather, that he would go out into the world, the King answers--

Forsooth no more may we hold thee than the hazel copse may hold The sun of the early dawning, that turneth it all into gold.

And how exquisite is this of Gudrun's beauty--

And her face is a rose of the morning by the night-tide framed about.

and how perfect in imagination this of the Volsung King's sword--

Therewith from the belt of battle he raised the golden sheath, And showed the peace-strings glittering around the hidden death.

and there is surely no more lovely description in poetry than this--

So the hall dusk deepens upon them till the candles come arow, And they drink the wine of departing and gird themselves to go; And they dight the dark-blue raiment and climb to the wains aloft While the horned moon hangs in the heaven and the summer wind blows soft. Then the yoke-beasts strained at the collar, and the dust in the moon arose, And they brushed the side of the acre and the blooming dewy close; Till at last, when the moon was sinking and the night was waxen late, The warders of the earl-folk looked forth from the Niblung gate And saw the gold pale-gleaming, and heard the wain-wheels crush The weary dust of the summer amidst the midnight hush.

In _Sigurd_, too, Morris's power of investing his language with the utmost dramatic compression at exactly the right moment is developed to its highest point. One example may be given. Regin means to use Sigurd for his own ends--to make him secure the treasure of Fafnir. But Sigurd as yet has no will for action--

the wary foot is surest, and the hasty oft turns back.

Then the craft of Regin is concentrated into six lines--

The deed is ready to hand, Yet holding my peace is the best, for well thou lovest the land: And thou lovest thy life moreover, and the peace of thy youthful days, And why should the full-fed feaster his hand to the rye-bread raise? Yet they say that Sigmund begat thee and he looked to fashion a man. Fear nought; he lieth quiet in his mound by the sea-waves wan.

and Sigurd cries back--

Tell me, thou Master of Masters, what deed is the deed I shall do? Nor mock thou the son of Sigmund lest the day of his birth thou rue.

In the treatment of the poem throughout, however, the quality that is predominant may be most fittingly described as magnificence of imagination. This is, of course, a thing quite distinct from mere magnificence of phrase. Not only is the utterance splendid, but the thing uttered and the thing suggested are splendid too. The voices are indeed tremendous, but that is because they are the voices of tremendous people. We feel always that we are moving among a humanity not in any way idealized, but framed in the proportions of giants, purged of everything inessential and tautened in all its sinews. And when the spirits of these people are drawn up to some unwonted height of emotional intensity the result is a cry from a world the knowledge of which moves us to a heroic hope for our race. The grief of Gudrun over Sigurd dead, with the wonderful refrain interwoven by the narrator, is a grief that in itself is a triumph over any blows that destiny can inflict. Once man can sorrow in this fashion, we feel he has conquered his fate. And the death-song of Gunnar is yet more magnificent. The poet who wrote that wonderful chant of man in the face of death has fathomed the very depths of song-craft. Readers who know Morris's poetry will forgive me for taking them through these lines once again--

So perished the Gap of the Gaping, and the cold sea swayed and sang, And the wind came down on the waters, and the beaten rock-walls rang; There the Sun from the south came shining, and the Starry Host stood round, And the wandering Moon of the heavens his habitation found; And they knew not why they were gathered, nor the deeds of their shaping they knew: But lo, Mid-Earth the Noble 'neath their might and their glory grew, And the grass spread over its face, and the Night and the Day were born, And it cried on the Death in the even, and it cried on the Life in the morn; Yet it waxed and waxed, and knew not, and it lived and had not learned; And where were the Framers that framed, and the Soul and the Might that had yearned?

On the Thrones are the Powers that fashioned, and they name the Night and the Day, And the tide of the Moon's increasing, and the tide of his waning away; And they name the years for the story; and the Lands they change and change, The great and the mean and the little, that this unto that may be strange: They met, and they fashioned dwellings, and the House of Glory they built; They met, and they fashioned the Dwarf-kind, and the Gold and the Gifts and the Guilt.

There were twain, and they went upon earth, and were speechless unmighty and wan; They were hopeless, deathless, lifeless, and the Mighty named them Man; Then they gave them speech and power, and they gave them colour and breath; And deeds and the hope they gave them, and they gave them Life and Death; Yea, hope, as the hope of the Framers; yea, might, as the Fashioners had, Till they wrought, and rejoiced in their bodies, and saw their sons and were glad: And they changed their lives and departed, and came back as the leaves of the trees Come back and increase in the summer:--and I, I, I am of these; And I know of Them that have fashioned, and the deeds that have blossomed and grow; But nought of the God's repentance, or the God's undoing I know.

No more striking example of the meaning of personality in poetry could well be found than in a comparison between this song and the famous second chorus of Swinburne's "Atalanta in Calydon," which had been published ten years earlier. Superficially there is a kinship both of substance and music, but superficially only. A moderately sensitive ear will immediately catch the difference in the swell of the lines, and the substance is alike just as a landscape of Turner is like one of Corot's--they are both landscapes.

The imaginative and moral atmosphere of Sigurd is that of the northern peoples. The figures of the story are giants and move along their lives as such, but there is always behind them the mute shadow of a yet greater immensity, the fate that reveals itself through no oracles. At the moments of their most glorious victories and sweetest attainment, these men and women, Sigurd and Gunnar and Brynhild and Gudrun and their fellows, are more or less consciously in the presence of the end that makes neither presage nor promise. The hope of Valhall is in reality no more than sublime courage. Morris himself, in a letter written at the time when he was going through the Sagas, said 'what a glorious outcome of the worship of Courage these stories are.' This is, finally, the supreme gift of the northern race to the world, and it is embodied for us for ever in the song of _Sigurd the Volsung_; not unquestioning acceptance, not the cheerful strength of faith, not mere indifference begotten of the delights of the immediate moment, but a deep sense of the mystery that may or may not be beneficent in its design, and in the face of all an invulnerable Courage.

VI

TRANSLATIONS AND SOCIALISM

The completion of _Sigurd the Volsung_ may conveniently be treated as a half-way house in Morris's career. The poet had fully proved himself. The lovely morning song of _Guenevere_, a little uncertain both in its own expression of life and in the direction along which it pointed the singer's development, but nevertheless clearly the promise of some memorable doings in the world of poetry, had matured through the simple clarity and joyousness of _Jason_ and _The Earthly Paradise_ into this fierce and elemental strength, corrected as it were from step to step by the practical experience of the poet's daily life. At the beginning of the translation of the Völsunga Saga he had written--

So draw ye round and hearken, English Folk, Unto the best tale pity ever wrought--

and now he had fashioned that tale anew into its greatest presentment, raising its spirit into an expression worthy to rank with the supreme masterpieces of the world. His creativeness as poet had not exhausted itself, but it had achieved its most urgent purpose; it had evolved a life which the poet's imaginative longing told him might yet be realized on earth. From this time the business of setting the crooked straight among the affairs of his day began to absorb his attention and energy, and in the outcome he published but one more book of poems, which will be considered later. In 1875 he had printed his verse translation of _The Aeneids of Virgil_, about which, as was inevitable, the opinion of classical scholars was, and remains, divided. There is a quality in poetry which is finally untranslatable from one language to another, the quality that is knit into the words themselves. The ecstasy of which I have spoken is capable of a thousand shades of spiritual colour, and when a poet is moved by it he is moved by it in a kind that can never be precisely repeated, either in himself or another. The translator as a rule gives us the substance and loses this other quality altogether; the most that we can hope for is that he may be a poet himself, and, retaining the substance, substitute an ecstasy of his own which shall in some measure compensate for the loss of the particular exaltation of the original. This Morris does; reading his translation we may--indeed must--miss some essential Virgilian quality, but we have the great story faithfully told, and we have poetry. We may continue to ask for more than that, but we shall continue to be denied. This translation was followed by _The Odyssey_ in 1887 and _Beowulf_ in 1895.

The growth of Morris's socialism can fortunately be traced without divergence into chronological data. Of its nature we have already seen something in considering his poetry, but in _A Dream of John Ball_ and _News from Nowhere_ he defined it in detail, not only in its imaginative but also in its practical aspect. Before turning to these it will be well briefly to outline his movements in the later years of his life. The business of Morris and Company had already passed into his own hands, not without some difficulty--though without friction--in closing the partnership arrangements. This really meant but little added labour, as he had in effect been responsible for its control almost since its commencement. In 1877 he was asked whether he would accept the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford in the event of its being offered to him, and declined emphatically though graciously enough. In the next year he moved to the house on the Mall at Hammersmith to which was attached the lecture room where the early meetings of the Hammersmith Socialists were held, and his active propagandist work had begun. In addition to constant meetings and lectures on socialism and art, the conduct of his paper _The Commonweal_, and his own business affairs, he undertook any work that came to his hand for the furtherance of his fixed ideal. Among other things he was one of the founders and the first secretary of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, and finally he linked to his name the brief but noble career of the Kelmscott Press. He died on the 3rd of October, 1896, at the age of sixty-three, and was buried in the churchyard at Kelmscott, wearied out but not embittered by the strife of his later years and the insults of people who could only feel the vigour of his blows without understanding the cause in which they were struck.

_A Dream of John Ball_ was published in 1888. In it Morris gives once again a picture of that life lived in close contact with earth which he so earnestly desired, but it is not the complete life of _The Earthly Paradise_ or _News from Nowhere_. The people are not yet free, although they have not yet fallen to the indifference to freedom that Morris looked upon as the most distressing manifestation of his own day. Together with this picture we have a long discussion between John Ball, the people's priest, and the dreamer--Morris himself--as to the result of the risings that are then taking shape, and the future of civilization. The hope that the priest cries out to the people from the village cross becomes in turn the hope of Morris for his own generation, and slowly, in the talk that follows, the dreamer outlines the whole cause and effect of the evil that is analysed much more closely in _News from Nowhere_; the age of commercial tyranny that shall come will be strong in its days because the slaves will nurse the hope that they themselves may rise to the seats of the tyrants in turn--'and this shall be the very safeguard of all rule and law in those days.' John Ball speaks with the voice of Morris. When he was in prison he--

'lay there a-longing for the green fields and the white-thorn bushes and the lark singing over the corn, and the talk of good fellows round the ale-house bench, and the babble of the little children, and the team on the road and the beasts afield, and all the life of earth.'