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Book, page 71 / 197 Still beaten by the billows green, Whose murmur comes unceasingly Unto the place for which I cry. For which I cry both day and night, For which I let slip all delight, That maketh me both deaf and blind, Careless to win, unskilled to find, And quick to lose what all men seek. Yet tottering as I am, and weak, Still have I left a little breath To seek within the jaws of death An entrance to that happy place, To seek the unforgotten face Once seen, once kissed, once rest from me Anigh the murmuring of the sea." "Jason" is, practically, a very long tale from the "Earthly Paradise," as the "Earthly Paradise" is an immense treasure of shorter tales in the manner of "Jason." Mr. Morris reverted for an hour to his fourteenth century, a period when London was "clean." This is a poetic license; many a plague found mediaeval London abominably dirty! A Celt himself, no doubt, with the Celt's proverbial way of being impossibilium cupitor, Mr. Morris was in full sympathy with his Breton Squire, who, in the reign of Edward III., sets forth to seek the Earthly Paradise, and the land where Death never comes. Much more dramatic, I venture to think, than any passage of "Jason," is that where the dreamy seekers of dreamland, Breton and Northman, encounter the stout King Edward III., whose kingdom is of this world. Action and fantasy are met, and the wanderers explain the nature of their quest. One of them speaks of death in many a form, and of the flight from death:- "His words nigh made me weep, but while he spoke I noted how a mocking smile just broke The thin line of the Prince's lips, and he Who carried the afore-named armoury Puffed out his wind-beat cheeks and whistled low: But the King smiled, and said, 'Can it be so?
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