Explore "To the Muse of the North" by William Morris on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
O muse that swayest the sad Northern Song, / Thy right hand full of smiting and of wrong, / Thy left hand holding pity; and thy breast / Heaving with hope of that so certain rest: / Thou, with the grey eyes kind and unafraid, / The soft lips trembling not, though they have said / The doom of the World and those that dwell therein.
The lips that smile not though thy children win / The fated Love that draws the fated Death.
O, borne adown the fresh stream of thy breath, / Let some word reach my ears and touch my heart, / That, if it may be, I may have a part / In that great sorrow of thy children dead / That vexed the brow, and bowed adown the head, / Whitened the hair, made life a wondrous dream, / And death the murmur of a restful stream, / But left no stain upon those souls of thine / Whose greatness through the tangled world doth shine.
O Mother, and Love and Sister all in one, / Come thou; for sure I am enough alone / That thou thine arms about my heart shouldst throw, / And wrap me in the grief of long ago.