How far it is really beautiful
how can I tell? How can I discount the "personal bias"? Only I know
that it is unforgettable. Again (Galahad speaks):--
"I saw
One sitting on the altar as a throne,
Whose face no man could say he did not know,
And, though the bell still rang, he sat alone,
With raiment half blood-red, half white as snow."
Such things made their own special ineffaceable impact.
Leaving the Arthurian cycle, Mr. Morris entered on his especially
sympathetic period--the gloom and sad sunset glory of the late fourteenth
century, the age of Froissart and wicked, wasteful wars. To Froissart it
all seemed one magnificent pageant of knightly and kingly fortunes; he
only murmurs a "great pity" for the death of a knight or the massacre of
a town. It is rather the pity of it that Mr. Morris sees: the hearts
broken in a corner, as in "Sir Peter Harpedon's End," or beside "The
Haystack in the Floods." Here is a picture like life of what befell a
hundred times. Lady Alice de la Barde hears of the death of her knight:--
"ALICE
"Can you talk faster, sir?
Get over all this quicker? fix your eyes
On mine, I pray you, and whate'er you see
Still go on talking fast, unless I fall,
Or bid you stop.
"SQUIRE
"I pray your pardon then,
And looking in your eyes, fair lady, say
I am unhappy that your knight is dead.
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