Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

William Morris (1834–1896)

Extracts from Love Is Enough: The Land of the Dream

THERE is a place in the world, a great valley

That seems a green plain from the brow of the mountains,

But hath knolls and fair dales when adown there thou goest:

There are homesteads therein with gardens about them,

And fair herds of kine and grey sheep a-feeding,

And willow-hung streams wend through deep grassy meadows,

And a highway winds through them from the outer world coming:

Girthed about is the vale by a grey wall of mountains,

Rent apart in three places and tumbled together

In old times of the world when the earth-fires flowed forth:

And as you wend up these away from the valley

You think of the sea and the great world it washes:

But through two you may pass not, the shattered rocks shut them.

And up through the third there windeth a highway,

And its gorge is fulfilled by a black wood of yew-trees.

And I know that beyond, though mine eyes have not seen it,

A city of merchants beside the sea lieth.