Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/122

ÆT. 23] lands dwelt in by the men of Burgdale or Upmeads or Utterhay. The Muse of the North had not yet become to him what it was in later years, "Mother, and Love, and Sister all in one," as he calls it in a poem written about ten years after this. The tale of "Lindenborg Pool" is indeed suggested by a story in Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," and "The Hollow Land" is headed by a few lines from the Niebelungenlied; but the atmosphere is throughout that of the French romances, not that of the Scandinavian epic. Another likeness between the two cycles of stories is the skilful interweaving of prose and verse, afterwards adopted by him as a conscious literary method in "The House of the Wolfings" and "The Well at the World's End." Among these early romances are several exquisite lyrical fragments. One of these, the song sung by Margaret in "The Hollow Land," has passed from mouth to mouth among many lovers of poetry who never read the romance itself:

The first verse of another fragment in the same story, a Christmas carol heard sung in the snow by a sentinel of Queen Swanhilda's, was perpetually repeated among his friends; nor is it easy to forget after a single hearing:

Queen Mary's crown was gold, King Joseph's crown was red, But Jesus' crown was diamond That lit up all the bed Mariæ Virginis.