The long hours in the empty house passed delightfully in reading andwriting. I was in the midst of the Romantics now. There was a humilityin me (as a reader) at that time which I shall never recapture. Somepoems I could not enjoy as well as others. It never occurred to me thatthese might be the inferior ones; I merely thought that I was gettingtired of my author or was not in the right mood. The longueurs ofEndymion I attributed wholly to myself. The "swoony" element in Keats'sensuality (as when Porphyro grows "faint") I tried hard to like, andfailed. I thought--though I have forgotten why--that Shelley must bebetter than Keats and was sorry I liked him less. But my great author atthis period was William Morris. I had met him first in quotation inbooks on Norse Mythology; that led me to Sigurd the Volsung. I did notreally like this as much as I tried to, and I think I now know why: themetre does not satisfy my ear. But then, in Arthur's bookcase, I foundThe Well at the World's End. I looked--I read chapter headings--Idipped--and next day I was off into town to buy a copy of my own. Like somany new steps it appeared to be partly a revival--"Knights in Armour"returning from a very early period of my childhood. After that I readall the Morris I could get, Jason, The Earthly Paradise, the proseromances. The growth of the new delight is marked by my suddenrealisation, almost with a sense of disloyalty, that the letters WILLIAMMORRIS were coming to have at least as potent a magic in them as WAGNER.
Mix, sensual erotic house faggot electro.
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