William Morris Archive

For poems not published in the Collected Works or Artist, Writer, Socialist, a transcription is provided. In some cases the date of composition is uncertain.

1. “The Burghers’ Battle” ( Thick rise the spearshafts o’er the land / That erst the harvest bore; )

2. “State-Aided Emigration, 889” ( Lo trim on the rollers all ready for sea )

3. “The Hall and the Wood” ( ’Twas in the water-dwindling tide / When July days were done, )

4. “The Day of Days” ( Each eve earth falleth down the dark, / As though its hope were o’er; )

5. “The Message of the March Wind” ( Fair now is the springtide, now earth lies beholding )

6. “A Death Song” ( What cometh here from west to east awending? / And who are these, the marchers stern and slow? )

7. “Earth the Healer, Earth the Keeper” ( So swift the hours are moving / Unto the time unproved: )

8. “The Folk-mote by the River” ( It was up in the morn we rose betimes / From the hall-floor hard by the row of limes. )

9. “Thunder in the Garden” ( When the boughs of the garden hang heavy with rain / And the blackbird reneweth his song, )

10. Chants for Socialists. Socialist League Office, 1885.

11. “The Voice of Toil” ( I heard men saying, leave hope and praying, / All days shall be as all have been; )

12. “The Day is Coming” ( Come hither lads and hearken, for a day there is to tell / Of the wonderful days a’coming when all shall be better than well. )

13. “All For the Cause” ( Hear a word, a word in season, for the day is drawing nigh, / when the Cause shall call upon us, some to live, and some to die. )

14. “Mother and Son” ( Now sleeps the land of houses, and dead night holds the street, )

15. “The Pilgrims of Hope” ( Fair now is the springtide, now earth lies beholding )

16. “No Master” ( Saith man to man, We’ve heard and known / That we no master need )

17. “The March of the Workers” ( What is this, the sound and rumour? What is this that all men hear, )

18. “Down Among The Dead Men” ( Come, comrades, come, your glasses clink / Up with your hands a health to drink, )

19. “Drawing Near the Light” ( Lo when we wade the tangled wood )

20. “The Half of Life Gone” ( The days have slain the days, and the seasons have gone by )

21. “Mine and Thine” ( Two words about the world we see, / And nought but Mine and Thine they be. )

22. “Goldilocks and Goldilocks” ( It was Goldilocks woke up in the morn / At the first shearing of the corn. )

23. “May Day [1892]” ( O earth, once again cometh spring to deliver )

24. “May Day, 1894” ( Clad is the year in all her best, )

25. “For the Bed at Kelmscott” ( The wind’s on the wold / And the night is a-cold )

26. “She and He” ( SHE: The blossom's white upon the thorn, /The lily's on the lea, )

* 27. discarded metrical opening for The Water of the Wondrous Isles.

28. “Verses for Pictures: Day. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. Night.” (Day. I am Day; I bring again / Life and glory, Love and pain: )

See "List of Morris's Poems from the Earthly Paradise Period," C-35.

29. Verses for Pictures: “The Pilgrim at the Gate of Idleness” ( Lo, Idleness that opes the Gates )

30. Verses for Pictures: “The Heart of the Rose” ( The Ending of the tale ye see: )

31. “For the Briar Rose” ( The Briar wood. The fateful slumber floats and flows / about the tangle of the rose; )

32. “Another for the Briar Rose” ( O treacherous scent, O thorny sight, / O tangle of world’s wrong and right, )

33. Praise of Wine ( The sun grows dim & the day waxes old / And the blossoms droop, for May is a-cold, )

34. “Come the tidings unto hand,” early verse fragment, Child Christopher

35. Poems in The House of the Wolfings

36. Poems in The Roots of the Mountains

37. Poems in The Story of the Glittering Plain

38. Poems in The Well at the World’s End

* 39. “Amidst a forest of the wild”

40. The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs

41. Tapestry Trees

42. “The Flowering Orchard” ( Lo silken my garden, / And silken my sky, )

43. “The Woodpecker” ( I once a King an chief / Now am the tree-bark’s thief )

44. “The Lion” ( The Beasts that be / In wood and waste, )

45. “The Forest” ( Pear-tree. By woodman’s edge I faint and fail; / By craftsman’s edge I tell the tale. )

46. “Pomona” ( I am the ancient Apple-Queen, / As once I was so am I now. )

47. “Flora” ( I am the handmaid of the earth, / I broider fair her glorious gown, )

48. “The Orchard” ( Midst bitten mead and acre shorn, / The world without is waste and worn )

49. Fragment: “Three spae-wives left a rune staff on the bed”

50. “Torches and waxlights quickened in the Hall”

51. "The New Year" (What wealth shall then be left to us)