A King of Fire and his Steed

Heraclitus taught us that the primal element, or root, is fire, but this hardly means that there are beings made of fire, carved of the shifting substance of flames. This almost unimaginable fancy was attempted by William Morris in the tale ‘The Ring Given to Venus' from his cycle The Earthly Paradise (1868-70). It runs as follows:

Most like a mighty king was he, And crowned and sceptred royally;

As a white flame his visage shone, Sharp, clear-cut as a face of stone;

But flickering flame, not flesh, it was;

And over it such looks did pass

Of wild desire, and pain, and fear,

As in his people's faces were,

But tenfold fiercer: furthermore,

A wondrous steed the master bore,

Unnameable of kind or make,

Not horse, nor hippogriff, nor drake.

Like and unlike to all of these,

And flickering like the semblances

Of an ill dream . . .

Perhaps in the above lines there is an echo of the deliberately ambiguous personification of Death in Paradise Lost (II, 666-73):

The other shape,

If shape it might be called that shape had none

Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb.

Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,

For each seem'd either; black it stood as Night,