In the covers of the first edition were announcements of the "Earthly Paradise": that vast collection of the world's old tales retold. One might almost conjecture that "Jason" had originally been intended for a part of the "Earthly Paradise," and had outgrown its limits. The tone is much the same, though the "criticism of life" is less formally and explicitly stated.
For Mr. Morris came at last to a "criticism of life." It would not have satisfied Mr. Matthew Arnold, and it did not satisfy Mr.
Morris! The burden of these long narrative poems is vanitas vanitatum: the fleeting, perishable, unsatisfying nature of human existence, the dream "rounded by a sleep." The lesson drawn is to make life as full and as beautiful as may be, by love, and adventure, and art. The hideousness of modern industrialism was oppressing to Mr. Morris; that hideousness he was doing his best to relieve and redeem, by poetry, and by all the many arts and crafts in which he was a master. His narrative poems are, indeed, part of his industry in this field. He was not born to slay monsters, he says, "the idle singer of an empty day." Later, he set about slaying monsters, like Jason, or unlike Jason, scattering dragon's teeth to raise forces which he could not lay, and could not direct.
I shall go no further into politics or agitation, and I say this much only to prove that Mr. Morris's "criticism of life," and prolonged, wistful dwelling on the thought of death, ceased to satisfy himself. His own later part, as a poet and an ally of Socialism, proved this to be true. It seems to follow that the peculiarly level, lifeless, decorative effect of his narratives, which remind us rather of glorious tapestries than of pictures, was no longer wholly satisfactory to himself. There is plenty of charmed and delightful reading--"Jason" and the "Earthly Paradise"are literature for The Castle of Indolence, but we do miss a strenuous rendering of action and passion. These Mr. Morris had rendered in "The Defence of Guinevere": now he gave us something different, something beautiful, but something deficient in dramatic vigour. Apollonius Rhodius is, no doubt, much of a pedant, a literary writer of epic, in an age of Criticism. He dealt with the tale of "Jason," and conceivably he may have borrowed from older minstrels. But the Medea of Apollonius Rhodius, in her love, her tenderness, her regret for home, in all her maiden words and ways, is undeniably a character more living, more human, more passionate, and more sympathetic, than the Medea of Mr. Morris. I could almost wish that he had closely followed that classical original, the first true love story in literature. In the same way I prefer Apollonius's spell for soothing the dragon, as much terser and more somniferous than the spell put by Mr. Morris into the lips of Medea. Scholars will find it pleasant to compare these passages of the Alexandrine and of the London poets. As a brick out of the vast palace of "Jason" we may select the song of the Nereid to Hylas--Mr. Morris is always happy with his Nymphs and Nereids:-"I know a little garden-close Set thick with lily and with rose, Where I would wander if I might From dewy dawn to dewy night, And have one with me wandering.
And though within it no birds sing, And though no pillared house is there, And though the apple boughs are bare Of fruit and blossom, would to God, Her feet upon the green grass trod, And I beheld them as before.
There comes a murmur from the shore, And in the place two fair streams are, Drawn from the purple hills afar, Drawn down unto the restless sea;The hills whose flowers ne'er fed the bee, The shore no ship has ever seen, Still beaten by the billows green, Whose murmur comes unceasingly Unto the place for which I cry.
For which I cry both day and night, For which I let slip all delight, That maketh me both deaf and blind, Careless to win, unskilled to find, And quick to lose what all men seek.
Yet tottering as I am, and weak, Still have I left a little breath To seek within the jaws of death An entrance to that happy place, To seek the unforgotten face Once seen, once kissed, once rest from me Anigh the murmuring of the sea.""Jason" is, practically, a very long tale from the "Earthly Paradise," as the "Earthly Paradise" is an immense treasure of shorter tales in the manner of "Jason." Mr. Morris reverted for an hour to his fourteenth century, a period when London was "clean."This is a poetic license; many a plague found mediaeval London abominably dirty! A Celt himself, no doubt, with the Celt's proverbial way of being impossibilium cupitor, Mr. Morris was in full sympathy with his Breton Squire, who, in the reign of Edward III., sets forth to seek the Earthly Paradise, and the land where Death never comes. Much more dramatic, I venture to think, than any passage of "Jason," is that where the dreamy seekers of dreamland, Breton and Northman, encounter the stout King Edward III., whose kingdom is of this world. Action and fantasy are met, and the wanderers explain the nature of their quest. One of them speaks of death in many a form, and of the flight from death:-"His words nigh made me weep, but while he spoke I noted how a mocking smile just broke The thin line of the Prince's lips, and he Who carried the afore-named armoury Puffed out his wind-beat cheeks and whistled low:
But the King smiled, and said, 'Can it be so?
I know not, and ye twain are such as find The things whereto old kings must needs be blind.
For you the world is wide--but not for me, Who once had dreams of one great victory Wherein that world lay vanquished by my throne, And now, the victor in so many an one, Find that in Asia Alexander died And will not live again; the world is wide For you I say,--for me a narrow space Betwixt the four walls of a fighting place.
Poor man, why should I stay thee? live thy fill Of that fair life, wherein thou seest no ill But fear of that fair rest I hope to win One day, when I have purged me of my sin.