I
should like to have seen the great parlour, and the tapestry-room
with the story of Samson that bothered Rossetti so over his work. I
should like to have seen the big oak bed, with its hangings
embroidered with one of Morris's sweetest lyrics:
"The wind's on the wold,
And the night is a-cold."
I should like to have seen the tapestry-chamber, and the room where
Morris, who so frankly relished the healthy savour of meat and
drink, ate his joyful meals, and the peacock yew-tree that he found
in his days of failing strength too hard a task to clip. I should
like to have seen all this, I say; and yet I am not sure that
tables and chairs, upholsteries and pictures, would not have come
in between me and the sacred spirit of the place.
So I turned to the church. Plain and homely as its exterior is,
inside it is touched with the true mediaeval spirit, like the "old
febel chapel" of the Mort d'Arthur. Its bare walls, its half-
obliterated frescoes, its sturdy pillars, gave it an ancient,
simple air. But I did not, to my grief, see the grave of Morris,
though I saw in fancy the coffin brought from Lechlade in the
bright farm-waggon, on that day of pitiless rain.
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