No More Learning

. . .
Delicate and clean-made is the little trench that goeth from thy mouth
to thy lips, and sweet it is, and there is more might in it than sweet
words spoken. Thy lips they are of the finest fashion, yet rather thin
than full; and some would not have it so; but I would, whereas I see
therein a sign of thy valiancy and friendliness. Surely he who did thy
carven chin had a mind to a master work and did no less. Great was the
deftness of thine imaginer, and he would have all folk who see thee
wonder at thy deep thinking and thy carefulness and thy kindness. Ah,
maiden! is it so that thy thoughts are ever deep and solemn? Yet at
least I know it of thee that they be hale and true and sweet.

'My friend, when thou hast a mirror, some of all this thou shalt see,
but not all; and when thou hast a lover some deal wilt thou hear, but
not all. But now thy she-friend may tell it thee all, if she have eyes
to see it, as have I; whereas no man could say so much of thee before
the mere love should overtake him, and turn his speech into the folly
of love and the madness of desire. '

All his good women, whether it is Danae in her tower, or that woman in
_The Wood beyond the World_ who can make the withered flowers in her
girdle grow young again by the touch of her hand, are of the kin of the
wood woman. All his bad women too and his half-bad women are of her
kin. The evils their enchantments make are a disordered abundance like
that of weedy places and they are as cruel as wild creatures are cruel
and they have unbridled desires.
One finds these evils in their typical
shape in that isle of the Wondrous Isles, where the wicked witch has
her pleasure-house and her prison, and in that 'isle of the old and the
young,' where until her enchantment is broken second childhood watches
over children who never grow old and who seem to the bystander who
knows their story 'like images' or like 'the rabbits on the grass. ' It
is as though Nature spoke through him at all times in the mood that is
upon her when she is opening the apple-blossom or reddening the apple
or thickening the shadow of the boughs, and that the men and women of
his verse and of his stories are all the ministers of her mood.


IV

When I was a child I often heard my elders talking of an old turreted
house where an old great-uncle of mine lived, and of its gardens and
its long pond where there was an island with tame eagles; and one day
somebody read me some verses and said they made him think of that old
house where he had been very happy. The verses ran in my head for years
and became to me the best description of happiness in the world, and
I am not certain that I know a better even now. They were those first
dozen verses of _Golden Wings_ that begin--

'Midways of a walled garden
In the happy poplar land
Did an ancient castle stand,
With an old knight for a warden.

Many scarlet bricks there were
In its walls, and old grey stone;
Over which red apples shone
At the right time of the year.

On the bricks the green moss grew,
Yellow lichen on the stone,
Over which red apples shone;
Little war that castle knew. '

When William Morris describes a house of any kind, and makes his
description poetical, it is always, I think, some house that he would
have liked to have lived in, and I remember him saying about the time
when he was writing of that great house of the Wolfings, 'I decorate
modern houses for people, but the house that would please me would be
some great room where one talked to one's friends in one corner and eat
in another and slept in another and worked in another. ' Indeed all he
writes seems to me like the make-believe of a child who is remaking the
world, not always in the same way, but always after his own heart; and
so unlike all other modern writers he makes his poetry out of unending
pictures of a happiness that is often what a child might imagine, and
always a happiness that sets mind and body at ease. Now it is a picture
of some great room full of merriment, now of the wine-press, now of
the golden threshing-floor, now of an old mill among apple-trees, now
of cool water after the heat of the sun, now of some well-sheltered,
well-tilled place among woods or mountains, where men and women live
happily, knowing of nothing that is too far off or too great for the
affections. He has but one story to tell us, how some man or woman lost
and found again the happiness that is always half of the body; and
even when they are wandering from it, leaves must fall over them, and
flowers make fragrances about them, and warm winds fan them, and birds
sing to them, for being of Habundia's kin they must not forget the
shadow of her Green Tree even for a moment, and the waters of her Well
must be always wet upon their sandals. His poetry often wearies us as
the unbroken green of July wearies us, for there is something in us,
some bitterness because of the Fall it may be, that takes a little from
the sweetness of Eve's apple after the first mouthful; but he who did
all things gladly and easily, who never knew the curse of labour, found
it always as sweet as it was in Eve's mouth. All kinds of associations
have gathered about the pleasant things of the world and half taken the
pleasure out of them for the greater number of men, but he saw them as
when they came from the Divine Hand. I often see him in my mind as I
saw him once at Hammersmith holding up a glass of claret towards the
light and saying, 'Why do people say it is prosaic to get inspiration
out of wine? Is it not the sunlight and the sap in the leaves? Are not
grapes made by the sunlight and the sap?