The World of Romance

The World of Romance

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The World of Romance, by William
Morris
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Title: The World of Romance being Contributions to The Oxford and
Cambridge Magazine, 1856
Author: William Morris

Release Date: March 12, 2006 [eBook #17973]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
WORLD OF ROMANCE***

Transcribed from the 1906 J. Thomson edition by David Price,
[email protected]

THE WORLD OF ROMANCE
BEING CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE
MAGAZINE, 1856
By WILLIAM MORRIS
LONDON: Published by J. THOMSON at 10, CRAVEN GARDENS,
WIMBLEDON, S. W. MCMVI
_In the tales . . . the world is one of pure romance. Mediaeval customs,
mediaeval buildings, the mediaeval Catholic religion, the general social
framework of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, are assumed
throughout, but it would be idle to attempt to place them in any known
age or country. . . Their author in later years thought, or seemed to
think, lightly of them, calling them crude (as they are) and very young
(as they are). But they are nevertheless comparable in quality to Keats's
'Endymion' as rich in imagination, as irregularly gorgeous in language,
as full in every vein and fibre of the sweet juices and ferment of the
spring_.--J. W. MACKAIL
In his last year at Oxford, Morris established, assuming the entire
financial responsibility, the 'Oxford and Cambridge Magazine,' written
almost entirely by himself and his college friends, but also numbering
Rossetti among its contributors. Like most college ventures, its career
was short, ending with its twelfth issue in December, 1856. In this
magazine Morris first found his strength as a writer, and though his
subsequent literary achievements made him indifferent to this earlier
work, its virility and wealth of romantic imagination justify its rescue
from oblivion.
The article on Amiens, intended originally as the first of a series, is
included in this volume as an illustration of Morris's power to clothe
things actual with the glamour of Romance.

THE STORY OF THE UNKNOWN CHURCH

I was the master-mason of a church that was built more than six
hundred years ago; it is now two hundred years since that church
vanished from the face of the earth; it was destroyed utterly,--no
fragment of it was left; not even the great pillars that bore up the tower
at the cross, where the choir used to join the nave. No one knows now
even where it stood, only in this very autumn-tide, if you knew the
place, you would see the heaps made by the earth-covered ruins
heaving the yellow corn into glorious waves, so that the place where
my church used to be is as beautiful now as when it stood in all its
splendour. I do not remember very much about the land where my
church was; I have quite forgotten the name of it, but I know it was
very beautiful, and even now, while I am thinking of it, comes a flood
of old memories, and I almost seem to see it again,--that old beautiful
land! only dimly do I see it in spring and summer and winter, but I see
it in autumn-tide clearly now; yes, clearer, clearer, oh! so bright and
glorious! yet it was beautiful too in spring, when the brown earth began
to grow green: beautiful in summer, when the blue sky looked so much
bluer, if you could hem a piece of it in between the new white carving;
beautiful in the solemn starry nights, so solemn that it almost reached
agony--the awe and joy one had in their great beauty. But of all these
beautiful times, I remember the whole only of autumn-tide; the others
come in bits to me; I can think only of parts of them, but all of autumn;
and of all days and nights in autumn, I remember one more particularly.
That autumn day the church was nearly finished and the monks, for
whom we were building the church, and the people, who lived in the
town hard by, crowded round us oftentimes to watch us carving.
Now the great Church, and the buildings of the Abbey where the
monks lived, were about three miles from the town, and the town stood
on a hill overlooking the rich autumn country: it was girt about with
great walls that had overhanging battlements, and towers at certain
places all along the walls, and often we could see from the churchyard
or the Abbey garden, the flash of helmets and spears, and the dim
shadowy