William Morris (1834–1896) was an important cultural figure of the nineteenth century whose long and complex career was shaped by his deep affection for the aesthetic and political world of the Middle Ages. His founding of the Kelmscott Press in 1891 revolutionized fine printing and established principles of craftsmanship and design that continue to influence fine press publishing today.

In his extraordinarily varied life as an artist, designer, writer, and printer, he was always haunted by echoes of an earlier, pre-modern era that shaped his understanding of the Victorian age. Because his activities were so wide-ranging, it is easy to forget that Morris continued to write verse until his final years and saw it as an essential element in his attempt to recreate a largely vanished culture of the English countryside. The poems in this volume, with their powerful medieval overtones, offer a fascinating record of his commitment to that distant rural world.