{"collection":"Northern European Mythology","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/morris/ep3/ep302.htm","path":"neu/morris/ep3/ep302.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/neu/morris/ep3/ep302.htm","text":"The Earthly Paradise, (December-February), by William Morris, [1870]\n_________\nDEAD lonely night and all streets quiet now,\n Thin o\u2019er the moon the hindmost cloud swims past\n Of that great rack that brought us up the snow;\n On earth strange shadows o\u2019er the snow are cast;\n Pale stars, bright moon, swift cloud make heaven so vast\n That earth left silent by the wind of night\n Seems shrunken \u2019neath the grey unmeasured height.\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Ah! through the hush the looked-for midnight clangs!\n And then, e\u2019en while its last stroke's solemn drone\n In the cold air by unlit windows hangs,\n Out break the bells above the year foredone,\n Change, kindness lost, love left unloved alone;\n Till their despairing sweetness makes thee deem\n Thou once wert loved, if but amidst a dream.\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0O thou who clingest still to life and love,\n Though nought of good, no God thou mayst discern,\n Though nought that is, thine utmost woe can move,\n Though no soul knows wherewith thine heart doth yearn,\n Yet, since thy weary lips no curse can learn,\n Cast no least thing thou lovedst once away,\n Since yet perchance thine eyes shall see the day.\nDECEMBER came, with mirth men needs must make\n E\u2019en for the empty days and leisures\u2019 sake\n That earth's cold leaden sleep doth bring; so there\n Our elders sat within the guest-hall fair,\n Not looking older for the snow without;\n Cheery enough; remembering not old doubt,\n A gnawing pain once, grown too hard to bear,\n And so cast by; not thinking of old fear,\n That conquering once, e\u2019en with its victory\n Must fade away, and, like all things else, die.\n Not thinking of much else than that they had\n Enough of life to make them somewhat glad\n When all went well with them.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Now so it fell\n That mariners were there, who \u2019gan to tell\n Mishaps betid upon the winter seas,\n Which set some younger men amidst of these\n To ask the Wanderers of their voyage vain,\n As knowing scarce the tale thereof. Small pain\n It gave them now to answer: yet belike\n On the old men, their hosts, the thing did strike\n In jarring wise, this turning o\u2019er and o\u2019er\n Of memories once so bitter sharp and sore:\n Wherefore at last an elder said, \"Let be,\n My masters! if about the troublous sea p. 4\n Ye needs must hear, hearken a tale once told\n By kin of ours in the dim days of old,\n Whose thoughts when turning to a peaceful home\n Unto this very west of ours must come\u2014\n \u2014Scarce causelessly meseems when all is said,\n And I remember that years bow my head,\n And not the trouble of those days of war,\n Of loss and wrong that in old stories are.\"","title":"The Earthly Paradise (December-February): December: Introduction","type":"page"}