'When a queen says with gentle queenly sound:
245 'O true as steel come now and talk with me,
I love to see your step upon the ground
' 'Unwavering, also well I love to see
That gracious smile light up your face, and hear
Your wonderful words, that all mean verily 250 ' The thing they seem to mean: good friend, so dear
To me in everything, come here tonight,
Or else the hours will pass most dull and drear;
' 'If you come not, I fear this time I might
Get thinking over much of times gone by,
255 When I was young, and green hope was in sight: ' 'For no man cares now to know why I sigh;
And no man comes to sing me pleasant songs,
Nor any brings me the sweet flowers that lie
' 'So thick in the gardens; therefore one so longs
260 To see you, Launcelot; that we may be
Like children once again, free from all wrongs
' 'Just for one night.' Did he not come to me?
What thing could keep true Launcelot away
If I said 'Come?' there was one less than three 265 'In my quiet room that night, and we were gay;
Till sudden I rose up, weak, pale, and sick,
Because a bawling broke our dream up, yea
'I looked at Launcelot's face and could not speak,
For he looked helpless too, for a little while;
270 Then I remember how I tried to shriek, 'And could not, but fell down; from tile to tile
The stones they threw up rattled o'er my head
And made me dizzier; till within a while
'My maids were all about me, and my head
275 On Launcelot's breast was being soothed away
From its white chattering, until Launcelot said?
9. Guenevere imagines these lies as being woven on a loom. 'Woof': the threads woven across the threads stretched lengthwise on a loom (the warp).
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Ho w I BECAM E A SOCIALIST / 149 1 'By God! I will not tell you more today, Judge any way you will?what matters it? You know quite well the story of that fray, 280 'How Launcelot stilled their bawling, the mad fit That caught up Gauwaine?all, all, verily, But just that which would save me; these things flit. 'Nevertheless you, O Sir Gauwaine, lie, Whatever may have happened these long years, 285 God knows I speak truth, saying that you lie! 'All I have said is truth, by Christ's dear tears.' She would not speak another word, but stood. Turned sideways; listening, like a man who hears 290His brother's trumpet sounding through the wood Of his foes' lances. She leaned eagerly, And gave a slight spring sometimes, as she could At last hear something really; joyfully Her cheek grew crimson, as the headlong speed Of the roan charger drew all men to see, 295 The knight who came was Launcelot at good need. 1858
How I Became a Socialist1
I am asked by the Editor to give some sort of a history of the above conversion, and I feel that it may be of some use to do so, if my readers will look upon me as a type of a certain group of people, but not so easy to do clearly, briefly and truly. Let me, however, try. But first, I will say what I mean by being a Socialist, since I am told that the word no longer expresses definitely and with certainty what it did ten years ago. Well, what I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brain workers, nor heart-sick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all? the realization at last of the meaning of the word COMMONWEALTH.
Now this view of Socialism which I hold to-day, and hope to die holding, is what I began with; I had no transitional period, unless you may call such a brief period of political radicalism during which I saw my ideal clear enough, but had no hope of any realization of it. That came to an end some months before I joined the (then) Democratic Federation,2 and the meaning of my joining that body was that I had conceived a hope of the realization of my ideal. If you ask me how much of a hope, or what I thought we Socialists then living and working would accomplish towards it, or when there would be
1. Written for the socialist magazine Justice in 2. The first socialist organization in London, 1894. founded in 1881.
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1492 / WILLIAM MORRIS
