April
by William Morris

English poet, translator, essayist, publisher and printer. His first published work was The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858). He achieved success as a poet with a romantic narrative, The Life and Death of Jason. He wrote a series of narrative poems collected in The Earthly Paradise (1868). His principal achievement is considered to be the epic Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs (1876), influenced by the Old Norse sagas. Among his best romances are A Dream of John Ball (1886) and News from Nowhere (1890). Underrated as a poet, he is remembered more as a designer and craftsman.

William Morris Next Poem →

April
by William Morris

O fair mid-spring, besung so oft and oft,
How can I praise thy loveliness enow?
Thy sun that burns not, and thy breezes soft
That o'er the blossoms of the orchard blow,
The thousand things that 'neath the young leaves grow,
The hopes and chances of the growing year,
Winter forgotten long, and summer near.

When summer brings the lily and the rose,
She brings us fear -her very death she brings
Hid in her anxious heart, the forge of woes;
And, dull with fear, no more the mavis sings.
But thou! thou diest not, but thy fresh life clings
About the fainting autumn's sweet decay,
When in the earth the hopeful seed they lay.

Ah! life of all the year, why yet do I,
Amid thy snowy blossoms' fragrant drift,
Still long for that which never draweth nigh,
Striving my pleasure from my pain to sift,
Some weight from off my fluttering mirth to lift?
- Now, when far bells are ringing "Come again,
Come back, past years! why will ye pass in vain?"

William Morris Next Poem →

April by William Morris