Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

The Message of the March Wind

William Morris (1834–1896)

FAIR now is the spring-tide, now earth lies beholding

With the eyes of a lover, the face of the sun;

Long lasteth the daylight, and hope is enfolding

The green-growing acres with increase begun.

Now sweet, sweet it is thro’ the land to be straying,

’Mid the birds and the blossoms and the beasts of the field;

Love mingles with love, and no evil is weighing

On thy heart or mine, where all sorrow is heal’d.

From township to township, o’er down and by tillage,

Far, far have we wander’d and long was the day;

But now cometh eve at the end of the village,

Where over the grey wall the church riseth grey.

There is wind in the twilight; in the white road before us

The straw from the ox-yard is blowing about;

The moon’s rim is rising, a star glitters o’er us,

And the vane on the spire-top is swinging in doubt.

Down there dips the highway, toward the bridge crossing over

The brook that runs on to the Thames and the sea.

Draw closer, my sweet, we are lover and lover;

This eve art thou given to gladness and me.

Shall we be glad always? Come closer and hearken:

Three fields further on, as they told me down there,

When the young moon has set, if the March sky should darken,

We might see from the hill-top the great city’s glare.

Hark, the wind in the elm-boughs! from London it bloweth,

And telleth of gold, and of hope and unrest;

Of power that helps not; of wisdom that knoweth,

But teacheth not aught of the worst and the best.

Of the 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.

Hark! the March wind again of a people is telling;

Of the life that they live there, so haggard and grim,

That if we and our love amidst them had been dwelling,

My fondness had falter’d, thy beauty grown dim.

This land we have loved in our love and our leisure,

For them hangs in heaven, high out of their reach;

The wide hills o’er the sea-plain for them have no pleasure,

The grey homes of their fathers no story to teach.

The singers have sung and the builders have builded,

The painters have fashioned their tales of delight;

For what and for whom hath the world’s book been gilded,

When all is for these but the blackness of night?

How long, and for what is their patience abiding?

How long and how oft shall their story be told,

While the hope that none seeketh in darkness is hiding,

And in grief and in sorrow the world groweth old?

Come back to the inn, love, and the lights and the fire,

And the fiddler’s old tune and the shuffling of feet;

For there in a while shall be rest and desire,

And there shall the morrow’s uprising be sweet.

Yet, love, as we wend, the wind bloweth behind us,

And beareth the last tale it telleth to-night,

How here in the spring-tide the message shall find us;

For the hope that none seeketh is coming to light.

Like the seed of midwinter, unheeded, unperish’d,

Like the autumn-sown wheat ’neath the snow lying green,

Like the love that o’ertook us, unawares and uncherish’d,

Like the babe ’neath thy girdle that groweth unseen;

So the hope of the people now buddeth and groweth,

Rest fadeth before it, and blindness and fear;

It biddeth us learn all the wisdom it knoweth;

It hath found us and held us, and biddeth us hear:

For it beareth the message: ‘Rise up on the morrow,

And go on thy ways toward the doubt and the strife;

Join hope to our hope and blend sorrow with sorrow,

And seek for men’s love in the short days of life.’

But lo, the old inn, and the lights, and the fire,

And the fiddler’s old tune and the shuffling of feet;

Soon for us shall be quiet and rest and desire,

And to-morrow’s uprising to deeds shall be sweet.