SOURCE: Stedman, Edmund Clarence. “Latter-Day Singers: Robert Buchanan, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris.” In Victorian Poets, pp. 366-78. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1887.

In the following excerpt, Stedman provides an overview of Morris's poetic oeuvre.

It is but natural, then, that we should find in William Morris a poet who may be described, to use the phrase of Hawthorne, as an Artist of the Beautiful. He delights in the manifestation of objective beauty. Byron felt himself one with Nature. Morris is absorbed in the loveliness of his romantic work, and as an artist seems to find enchantment and content.

In this serenity of mood he possesses that which has been denied to greater poets. True, he sings of himself,

          Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, Why should I strive to set the crooked straight? 

but what time could be to him more fortunate? Amid the problems...