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"Had she come all the way for this,
To part at last without a kiss?
Yea, had she borne the dirt and rain
That her own eyes might see him slain
Beside the haystack in the floods?"
William Morris (1834-1896), British poet. The Haystack in the Floods (l. 1-5). . .
Oxford Book of Narrative Verse, The. Iona Opie and Peter Opie, eds. (1983) Oxford University Press. |
"I love art, and I love history, but it is living art and living history that I love.... It is in the interest of living art and living history that I oppose so-called restoration. What history can there be in a building bedaubed with ornament, which cannot at the best be anything but a hopeless and lifeless imitation of the hope and vigour of the earlier world?"
William Morris (1834-1896), British artist, writer, printer. Lecture, 1882. "The History of Pattern-Designing," vol. 22, The Collected Works of William Morris (1910-1915). |
"Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement; a sanded floor and whitewashed walls and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the same with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings?"
William Morris (1834-1896), British artist, writer, printer. "The Lesser Arts," Hopes and Fears for Art (1882).
Morris's first public lecture, "The Decorative Arts: Their Relation to Modern Life and Progress." |
"This land is a little land; too much shut up within the narrow seas, as it seems, to have much space for swelling into hugeness: there are no great wastes overwhelming in their dreariness, no great solitudes of forests, no terrible untrodden mountain-walls: all is measured, mingled, varied, gliding easily one thing into another: little rivers, little plains, swelling, speedily- changing uplands, all beset with handsome orderly trees; little hills, little mountains, netted over with the walls of sheep- walks: all is little; yet not foolish and blank, but serious rather, and abundant of meaning for such as choose to seek it: it is neither prison nor palace, but a decent home."
William Morris (1834-1896), British artist, writer, printer. repr. In Collected Works, vol. 22. "The Lesser Arts," Hopes and Fears for Art (1882).
"Some people praise this homeliness overmuch," Morris added. |
"I know a little garden-close
Set thick with lily and red rose,
Where I would wander if I might
From dewy dawn to dewy night,"
William Morris (1834-1896), British poet. The Life and Death of Jason (l. 1-8). . .
Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1918. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. (New ed., rev. and enl., 1939) Oxford University Press. |
"Of 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."
William Morris (1834-1896), British artist, writer, printer. "The Message of the March Wind," The Pilgrims of Hope (1885). |
"A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works. Not only his own thoughts, but the thoughts of the men of past ages guide his hands; and, as part of the human race, he creates. If we work thus we shall be men, and our days will be happy and eventful."
William Morris (1834-1896), British artist, writer, printer. "Useful Work Versus Useless Toil," Signs of Change (1888). |
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