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The Pilgrims of Hope and Chants for Socialists

by William Morris

Pages
about 65
Category
Literature & Fiction
Language
English
Reading time
72 min at 250 wpm
Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 40 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

IN the midst of the bridge there we stopped and we wondered In London at last, and the moon going down, All sullied and red where the mast-wood was sundered By the void of the night-mist, the breath of the town.

On each side lay the City, and Thames ran between it Dark, struggling, unheard ’neath the wheels and the feet. A strange dream it was that we ever had seen it, And strange was the hope we had wandered to meet.

Was all nought but confusion? What man and what master Had each of these people that hastened along? Like a flood flowed the faces, and faster and faster Went the drift of the feet of the hurrying throng.

Till all these seemed but one thing, and we twain another, A thing frail and feeble and young and unknown; What sign mid all these to tell foeman from brother? What sign of the hope in our hearts that had grown?

WE went to our lodging afar from the river, And slept and forgot—and remembered in dreams; And friends that I knew not I strove to deliver From a crowd that swept o’er us in measureless streams,

Wending whither I knew not: till meseemed I was waking To the first night in London, and lay by my love, And she worn and changed, and my very heart aching With a terror of soul that forbade me to move.

Till I woke, in good sooth, and she lay there beside me, Fresh, lovely in sleep; but awhile yet I lay, For the fear of the dream-tide yet seemed to abide me In the cold and sad time ere the dawn of the day.

Then I went to the window, and saw down below me The market-wains wending adown the dim street, And the scent of the hay and the herbs seemed to know me, And seek out my heart the dawn’s sorrow to meet.

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