Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by William Morris. He was a British poet who also worked as a novelist and a translator,

and even as a textile designer and a social activist. There's a lot going on in William Morris's

work and in his life. Harold Bloom referred to him as a gifted lyrical and narrative poet,

one who is not read as widely as he ought to be. He compares favorably, Bloom suggested, to the

likes of Tennyson. And Bloom remarks that his,

really, he's a long narrative poem called Sigurd the Wolsung, which is rarely read

anymore, but which is worth it, according to Bloom. I myself have not read that, so that might be

worth checking out if you've got the time and the interest. Bloom also notes that his social activism in some ways obscures the quality of his poetry,

kind of diminishes it, and he says that that's a negative thing.

Bloom claims that he's actually way more gifted as a poet than his reputation maybe suggests

he was involved in the early socialist movement in England,

and in some ways this poetry has therefore been forgotten. But some have said that his work

was one of the precursors or the early influencers on what we think of as fantasy literature today.

In particular, you see that in, apparently,

in that Sigurdsulson. And I think you also see that in the poem that I'm going to read today,

which we'll get you right away now. It's called A Garden by the Sea, and this is how it goes.

I know a little garden close, sat thick with lily and red rose, where I would wander if I might, from dewy dawn to dewy night, and have one with me wandering.

And though within it no birds sing, and though no pillared house is there, and though the apple-boughs are bare of fruit and blossom,

wood to God her feet upon the green grass trod,

and I beheld them as before.

There comes a murmur from the shore,

...