[ Home ] [ Grove House, Iffley ] [ Oxford Circuit ] [ Kelmscott Manor ] [ Waterside centre ] [ Thames swim for Nolan Trust ]

You have reached iGreens.org.uk.  In December 2006 we moved to iGreens.org with faster servers and discussion boards.  Click here to follow us.  

A Wish for William Morris

(for Nick Bailey)

I’d have let him die here

That great lover of things

In the place he loved best.

Not graceless Hammersmith

That he healed in his book

But in the old manor,

Kelmscott by the river,

Where the bed was ready,

That he wrote the verse for,

May curtained, Jane sewed for,

With grass scent, late rose scent,

Invading the window,

Distant shouting of sheep,

A bravura blackbird,

Always his true love Thames.

The last time he came here

In springtime, in springtime,

Cuckoos whooped at seven,

Rooks and appleblossom,

Mediaeval garden,

Friend with a manuscript.

I’d have let him die then,

Saved from the wheelchair,

The hallucinations,

Blood leaping from his mouth,

Not knowing anyone.

He died in Hammersmith.

But they brought him home

In a harvest cart

Vine leaves all over

Past the house he’d found

To the church he’d saved

By his true love Thames.

O if there were justice they’d have saved him –

Twelve statues at oxford on Mary Virgin’s spire;

Blythburgh church; Peterborough’s

Great interior; the north-west tower

At Chichester; the lock-keepers roof 

At Eaton weir; a little barn

Vandalised at Black Bourton

Fights of his last three years.

O if there were justice they’d have saved him –

The tower, the Suffolk angels, the non-pareil nave,

The tower, the roof the barn – they’d have pulled him back

As he did them.  And Rouen itself,

Rouen itself and little Bourton

Would have come to deliver him

But things are as they are.

It was raining. Leaves still on the lime trees,

Church ready for harvest.

William Morris died at Hammersmith on 2 October 1896.  His funeral took place on 6 October, at St George’s Church, Kelmscott, Oxfordshire.

This poem is by UA Fanthorpe, from her collection Queueing for the Sun 2003. Peterloo Poets Calstock, Cornwall.

[ Home ] [ Up ]

You have reached iGreens.org.uk.  In December 2006 we moved to iGreens.org with faster servers and discussion boards.  Click here to follow us.  

Send mail to enquiries@igreens.org.uk  with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: November 12, 2006