SOURCE: Kirchhoff, Frederick. “Love is Enough: A Crisis in William Morris's Poetic Development.” Victorian Poetry 15, no. 4 (winter 1977): 297-306.

In the following essay, Kirchhoff views Love is Not Enough to be a transitional work in Morris's poetic development.

The notion of William Morris' career as a gradual flowering into inevitable Marxism and the very different notion of Morris as a “happy craftsman” have equally obscured the actual shape of his literary development.¹ Granted, fully understanding Morris entails fully understanding his work in all three fields. But at this—still relatively innocent—stage in the criticism of his poetry, what is needed is not another brave attempt to synthesize his achievement as a whole, but a painstaking examination of his poetry as poetry and of his poetic development as a strictly literary phenomenon. It is not just oversimplification but plain misunderstanding to argue that art led Morris to socialism. His...