SOURCE: Dawson, W. J. “William Morris.” In The Makers of English Poetry, pp. 368-79. New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1906.

In the following essay, Dawson credits Morris, along with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne, with the revival of Romanticism in English poetry and analyzes Morris's development as a poet.

William Morris is the third great name connected with the revival of Romanticism in modern poetry. His Defence of Guinevere, published in 1858, and dedicated to Rossetti, is marked by that same return to the mediæval spirit which so strikingly distinguished Rossetti, and which bore partial fruit in the early poems of Swinburne. The chief thing to be noticed about all three poets is that their poetry disdains modern thought and purpose, and deliberately seeks its inspiration in other times, and more ancient sources of emotion. Rossetti alone remained absolutely true to the mediæval spirit: his...