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    The Hollow Land
    The Hollow Land
    The Hollow Land
    Ebook50 pages53 minutes

    The Hollow Land

    By William Morris

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    About this ebook

    William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and socialist activist. Associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement, he was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts and methods of production. His literary contributions helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, while he played a significant role in propagating the early socialist movement in Britain.Born in Walthamstow, Essex, to a wealthy middle-class family, Morris came under the strong influence of medievalism while studying Classics at Oxford University, there joining the Birmingham Set. After university he trained as an architect, married Jane Burden, and developed close friendships with the Pre-Raphaelite artists Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and with the Neo-Gothic architect Philip Webb. Webb and Morris designed a family home, Red House, then in Kent, where the latter lived from 1859 to 1865, before relocating to Bloomsbury, central London. In 1861, Morris founded a decorative arts firm with Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Webb, and others: the Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. Becoming highly fashionable and much in demand, the firm profoundly influenced interior decoration throughout the Victorian period, with Morris designing tapestries, wallpaper, fabrics, furniture, and stained glass windows. In 1875, Morris assumed total control of the company, which was renamed Morris & Co. Although retaining a main home in London, from 1871 Morris rented the rural retreat of Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire. Greatly influenced by visits to Iceland, with Eiríkr Magnússon he produced a series of English-language translations of Icelandic Sagas. He also achieved success with the publication of his epic poems and novels, namely The Earthly Paradise (1868–1870), A Dream of John Ball (1888), the utopian News from Nowhere (1890), and the fantasy romance The Well at the World's End (1896). In 1877 he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings to campaign against the damage caused by architectural restoration. Embracing Marxism and influenced by anarchism, in the 1880s Morris became a committed revolutionary socialist activist; after an involvement in the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), he founded the Socialist League in 1884, but broke with that organization in 1890. In 1891 he founded the Kelmscott Press to publish limited-edition, illuminated-style print books, a cause to which he devoted his final years. Morris is recognised as one of the most significant cultural figures of Victorian Britain; though best known in his lifetime as a poet, he posthumously became better known for his designs. Founded in 1955, the William Morris Society is devoted to his legacy, while multiple biographies and studies of his work have seen publication (font: Wikipedia).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilliam Morris
    Release dateDec 10, 2015
    ISBN9788892527775
    The Hollow Land
    Author

    William Morris

    William Morris (1834-1896) was an accomplished writer, textile designer and artist. A utopian socialist, he was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Craft Movement, and was a founding member of the Socialist League in Britain. Greatly influenced by the medieval period, Morris helped establish the modern fantasy genre though his works The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems, A Dream of John Ball, and The Well at the World’s End. Authors like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were greatly influenced by works like The House of the Wolfings, The Roots of the Mountains, and The Wood Beyond the World. Morris was also an accomplished publisher, founding the Kelmscott Press in 1891, whose 1896 edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer is considered a masterpiece of book design.

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      Book preview

      The Hollow Land - William Morris

      The Hollow Land

      By

      William Morris

      To the best of our knowledge, the text of this

      work is in the Public Domain.

      HOWEVER, copyright law varies in other countries, and the work may still be under

      copyright in the country from which you are accessing this website. It is your

      responsibility to check the applicable copyright laws in your country before

      downloading this work.

      Struggling in the World.

      Failing in the World

      Fytte the Second

      Fytte the Third

      "We find in ancient story wonders many told,

      Of heroes in great glory, with spirit free and bold;

      Of joyances and high-tides, of weeping and of woe,

      Of noble reckon striving, mote ye now wonders know."

      Niebelungen Lied (see Carlylefs Miscellanies)

      Struggling in the World.

      Do you know where it is — the Hollow Land?

      I have been looking for it now so long, trying to find it again the Hollow Land for there I saw my love first.

      I wish to tell you how I found it first of all; but I am old, my memory fails me: you must wait and let me think if I perchance can tell you how it happened. Yea, in my ears is a confused noise of trumpet-blasts singing over desolate moors, in my ears and eyes a clashing and clanging of horse-hoofs, a ringing and glittering of steel; drawn-back lips, set teeth, shouts, shrieks, and curses.

      How was it that no one of us ever found it till that day? for it is near our country: but what time have we to look for it, or any good thing; with such biting carking cares hemming us in on every side — cares about great things — mighty things: mighty things, O my brothers! or rather little things enough, if we only knew it. Lives passed in turmoil, in making one another unhappy; in bitterest misunderstanding of our brothers’ hearts, making those sad whom God has not made sad, alas, alas! What chance for any of us to find the Hollow Land? What time even to look for it?

      Yet who has not dreamed of it? Who, half miserable yet the while, for that he knows it is but a dream, has not felt the cool waves round his feet, the roses crowning him, and through the leaves of beech and lime the many whispering winds of the Hollow Land?

      Now, my name was Florian, and my house was the house of the Lilies; and of that house was my father lord, and after him my eldest brother Amald; and me they called Florian de Liliis.

      Moreover, when my father was dead, there arose a feud between the Lilies’ house and Red Harald; and this that follows is the history of it.

      Lady Swanhilda, Red Harald’s mother, was a widow, with one son. Red Harald; and when she had been in widowhood two years, being of princely blood, and besides comely and fierce. King Urrayne sent to demand her in marriage. And I remember seeing the procession leaving the town, when I was quite a child; and many young knights and squires attended the Lady Swanhilda as pages, and amongst them, Amald, my eldest brother.

      And as I gazed out of the window, I saw him walking by the side of her horse, dressed in white and gold very delicately; but as he went it chanced that he stumbled. Now he was one of those that held a golden canopy over the lady’s head, so that it now sunk into wrinkles, and the lady had to bow her head full low, and even then the gold brocade caught in one of the long slim gold flowers that were wrought round about the crown she wore. She flushed up in her rage, and her smooth face went suddenly into the carven wrinkles of a wooden water-spout, and she caught at the brocade with her left hand, and pulled it away furiously, so that the warp and woof were twisted out of their place, and many gold threads were left dangling about the crown; but Swanhilda stared about when she rose, then smote my brother across the mouth with her gilded sceptre, and the red blood flowed all about his garments; yet he only turned exceeding pale, and dared say no word, though he was heir to the house of the Lilies: but my small heart

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