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The Daily Poem

William Morris' "Spring's Bedfellow"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6729 Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2021

⏱️ 8 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, novelist, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts and methods of production. His literary contributions helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, while he helped win acceptance of socialism in fin de siècle Great Britain. --Bio via Wikipedia.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome back to the Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today is Tuesday, March 23rd, 2021.

0:07.5

And today's poem is by another poet who, interestingly, had a birthday in March. His birthday is

0:14.5

tomorrow. March 24th, he was born the 24th of March in 1834, and he died on the 3rd of October

0:20.0

in 1896. This is William Morris.

0:22.9

He was a British poet and novelist and activist. And also he designed textiles. According to some of the

0:30.1

bios online, I don't know a lot about this part of his life, but it's, it is motivating me to get a

0:34.6

biography. But he was apparently one of the key people who helped

0:38.8

revive textile arts in Great Britain. He created designs for things like wallpaper and

0:46.9

rugs and stained glass windows and borders for book covers and book design. But he also was a student of the classics.

0:55.5

And he wrote fantasy and was, in many ways,

1:00.6

you could say a precursor, I think, to people like J.R.R. Tolkien,

1:05.8

in terms of his sort of his vibe, if you will, to use a distinctly not late 19th century British

1:17.4

term.

1:18.4

The poem that I'm going to read today in keeping with a spring-themed week here on the daily

1:23.5

poem is called Springs Bedfellow.

1:25.8

And like yesterday's poem, I'm actually reading it from a nature poem for every day of the year,

1:30.0

edited by Jane McMorland Hunter, which you can get online.

1:32.9

If you want to order it through a bookstore, you can go to goldberrybooks.com and click on

1:36.8

the bookshop.org or go to bookshop.org slash shop slash goldberry books.

1:40.9

But enough of that. Let's hear from William Morris, whose poem that I'm

1:45.3

going to read today is called Spring's Bedfellow. Spring went about the woods today, the soft

1:52.0

foot winter thief, and found where idle sorrow lay twixt flower and faded leaf. She looked on him, and found him fair, for all she had been told.

...

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