The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems by William Morris

First published: 1858

Type of work: Poetry

The Work:

The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems, the first collection of poems published by William Morris, is one of the three or four principal expressions of Pre-Raphaelitism in poetry. Although Morris had only just turned twenty-four when the volume appeared, it epitomizes his poetic qualities and foreshadows his artistic attainment. Algernon Charles Swinburne, his contemporary, wrote concerning it: “Such things as are in this book are taught and learned in no school but that of instinct.” It was Swinburne’s opinion that no other literary work had ever shown more distinctly the mark of native character and that the poetry was entirely original. He saw Morris as “not yet a master,” but “assuredly no longer a pupil.” Not unmindful of certain technical faults and an occasional hint of confusion in the work, Swinburne nevertheless went on to say that Morris’s volume was incomparable in its time for “perception and experience of tragic truth” and that no other contemporary poet had a “touch of passion at once so broad and so sure.”

Swinburne may have overstated the case for the originality of the poems; Morris shows strong influences of Sir Thomas Malory and Jean Froissart, though more in regard to selection of subject matter than in its presentation. His Arthurian poems reveal a genuine passion and exceptional beauty, especially in passages such as the vibrant, breathtaking narrative description that opens the title poem. Despite their freshness and strong feeling, these poems are in what may be designated the tapestry tradition—there is a hint of the decorative about them. Those poems derived more clearly from Froissart than from Malory, however (among them “Sir Peter Harpdon’s End,” “Concerning Geoffrey Teste Noir,” and the grim “Haystack in the Floods”) attest Morris’s realization that, even in the Middle Ages, the tourney was not the only aspect of war.

Although Morris had a lifelong passion for beauty, he also had a need for certain harsh or stark elements, and these are present in these poems. The touches of this power are evident in this first volume of his poems. An example of such stark description may be found in these lines from “Concerning Geoffrey Teste Noire”:

I think ’twas Geoffrey smote him on the browWith some spiked axe; and while he totter’d, dimAbout the eyes, the spear of Alleyne RouxSlipped through his camaille and his throat; well, well!

When Sir Peter Harpdon’s wife Alice, upon hearing of her husband’s death, cries: “I am much too young to live,/ Fair God, so let me die,” readers recognize in the cry a kind of Shakespearean poignancy. Among the many other qualities of this first book of poems is the apparent simplicity of a lyric such as “Golden Wings,” which attains deep sincerity as it smoothly reflects early memories in a manner distinctly Morris’s own. There is also the plain perfection of the little poem, “Summer Dawn,” in which, departing momentarily from the dreams and histories of long-past lives and battles, Morris speaks simply in his own voice of his desire for communion.

Morris, while studying medieval romances and admiring them for their curious intrinsic beauty, became convinced that if people could move backward through time to the age of the sea kings, they should find the essential characteristics of the race to be exactly like those of today. Admittedly, he found the Middle Ages much more ignorant, cruel, and savage than the ages preceding or following; nevertheless, he concluded that people of those times must have had feelings, desires, and thoughts quite like those of people of his time. His society had much in common, then, with that of the Middle Ages; one should, therefore, study the terrible times of the Middle Ages in order to understand them and to understand better one’s own time.

Morris gives readers some brief, sudden, and flashing pictures of that far-off time. The title poem presents a queen about to be burned at the stake; then, at the sound of a horse’s hooves, she knows that her lover is coming to her rescue. One of the most powerful of these pictures is presented in “The Haystack in the Floods.” Not revealing either how the tragedy began or how it ended, the poem opens with the haunting questions:

Had she come all the way for thisTo part at last without a kiss?Yea, had she borne the dirt and rainThat her own eyes might see him slainBeside the haystack in the floods?

Readers are at first told only enough about the woman Jehane to make them wonder about her character and to know that as she rides along she is miserable. Her lover Robert, who rides some distance ahead of her with a few armed men, is confronted by his adversary Godmar and numerous armed men. At first she fears for her own safety rather than Robert’s:

My God! my God! I have to treadThe long way back without you; thenThe court at Paris; those six men;The gratings of the Chatelet;The swift Seine on some rainy dayLike this, and people standing by,And laughing, while my weak hands tryTo recollect how strong men swim.

In her despair she contemplates accepting Godmar, the man whom she hates. Robert, whose men refuse to fight against the heavy odds, charges the enemy and is captured, disarmed, and bound. When after long hesitation Jehane refuses to come willingly to his castle, Godmar and his men murder Robert before her eyes. The poem ends with an uncertainty about her fate. Does she go mad? Will she be taken back and burned at the castle from which she has escaped? The reader may even suspect that she is feigning madness and that before the castle is reached she will yield to Godmar, who may then retain her until he tires of her. Having given the reader this glimpse of medieval passion, selfishness, suffering, and cruelty, Morris ends the poem, after Godmar’s men have beaten Robert’s brains out, on this note:

Then Godmar turned again and said:So, Jehane, the first fitte is read!Take note, my lady, that your wayLies backward to the Chatelet!She shook her head and gazed awhileAt her cold hands with a rueful smile,As though this thing had made her mad.This was the parting that they hadBeside the haystack in the floods.

Another grim, moving poem, a Browningesque monologue called “The Judgement of God,” supplies a second example of the same device.

Other noteworthy poems in the book are “The Little Tower,” “The Wind,” “The Eve of Crecy,” “In Prison,” and “The Blue Closet.” All extremely original, they display a wide range in idea and theme. In their ability to make readers understand the feelings of pain, terror, or heroic effort at particular moments in the lives of people, they all have great psychological insight. For example, Guenevere’s horrible soliloquy, revealing that she has wondered how the fire would quiver yards above her head, in its startlingly true psychology, improves upon the narrative of the original story. Especially in his use of monologue and dialogue, Morris successfully demonstrates that the poet can best revive the past not by detailed description of things but by faithful expression of the feelings of persons who lived long ago.

Without exaggeration, Morris’s The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems may be called an outstanding first volume of poetry. However, like the early volumes of most poets, it did not make any particular impact upon the reading public when it appeared in 1858. This lack of acclaim for the volume may have been a factor in Morris’s withdrawing for some time from the writing of poetry. Another factor was his feeling that writing poetry was neither particularly notable nor difficult and that it had no precedence over the new and exciting experiments in tapestry weaving and dyeing in which he was already engaged. Morris was content with the appreciation accorded the volume by a few of his friends, among them Dante Gabriel Rossetti, to whom it was dedicated.

Bibliography

Clutton-Brock, Arthur. William Morris. New York: Parkstone Press, 2007. Biography chronicling Morris’s multifaceted career, including his work as a poet and prose writer.

Helsinger, Elizabeth K. Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite Arts: Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008. Examines the works of the two poet-artists in order to describe the aesthetics of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and its expression in both literature and art. Chapter 3, “Lyric Color and The Defence of Guenevere,” focuses on this work.

Kirchhoff, Frederick. William Morris. Boston: Twayne, 1979. Literary biography of Morris. Places The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems within the larger context of Morris’s life and creative accomplishments, especially his writings.

Le Bourgeois, John Y. Art and Forbidden Fruit: Hidden Passion in the Life of William Morris. Cambridge, England: Lutterworth Press, 2006. An analysis of Morris’s life and poetry, describing his attachment to his sister Emma, who was a source of inspiration for his work.

Morris, William. The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems. Edited by Margaret A. Lourie. New York: Garland, 1981. A scholarly edition of the poems with extensive notes that explain passages in the poetry. A critical introduction with a full bibliography places this work in its setting of Victorian poetry.

Oberg, Charlotte. A Pagan Prophet, William Morris. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978. A study of Morris’s writings as the sum of a “living unity” of his creative vision. The poems in The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems are discussed last, out of chronological order, to demonstrate their relationship to the themes of Morris’s other work.

Silver, Carole. The Romance of William Morris. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1982. Examines the idea of romance, in its broadest literary and artistic sense, as revealed in Morris’s works. A chapter is devoted to how The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems exemplifies Morris’s concept of the genre of romance.

Tompkins, J. M. S. William Morris: An Approach to the Poetry. London: Cecil Woolf, 1988. A study of Morris’s poetry, which is defined not only as verse but also as prose romances. The opening chapter analyzes the poems in The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems with particular emphasis on explaining the sources in medieval literature that inspired Morris to compose these works.