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The brown children of the old rock village had poured down from their high eyrie to bombard the strangers from the world below; to stare, to beg, to laugh, to lisp out strange epithets in their crude patois; but at sight of the wonderful white lady and her gold-haired child they crowded back upon each other, hushed after their first cry into awed admiration for visitants from another world.
He had forgotten the day when, adroitly taking advantage of an acute phase of her dislike to her home surroundings, he crowned his labours with success. If he remembered anything, it was the dainty capriciousness with which the gold-haired, dark-eyed girl had treated him.
Undoubtedly the history of a soul is central in the poem; but the drawings of Italian landscape, so sure in outline, so vivid in colour; the views of old Italian city life, rich in the tumult of townsfolk, military chieftains, men-at-arms; the pictures of sombre interiors, and southern gardens, the hillside castle amid its vines, the court of love with its contending minstrels, the midnight camp lit by its fires; and, added to these, the Titianesque portraits of portly magnifico and gold-haired maiden, and thought-worn statist make up an environment which has no inconsiderable poetic value of its own, feeding, as it does, the inner eye with various forms and dyes, and leaving the "spirit in sense" more wealthy.
What if by some misfortune he were to get back his real youth? and were to become again the flustered boy who blundered from stammering rapture to wild misery, and back again, at the least word or gesture of a gold-haired girl? "Thank you, no!" says Jurgen. "The boy was more admirable than I, who am by way of being not wholly admirable. But then he had a wretched time of it, by and large.
I saw a garden-bed on which there grew, Low down amid gay grass, a violet, With flame of poppy flickering over it, And many gaudy spikes and blossoms new, Round which the wind with amorous whispers blew. There came a maid, gold-haired and lithe and strong, With limbs whereof the delicate perfumed flesh Was like a babe's.
Would men of race, tempted by the loveliness of this great gold-haired houri sleeping on the Pacific, come from old and new Spain and dream away a life of pleasure? What grapes would grow out of this rich soil to be crushed by Indian slaves into red wine! And did gold vein those velvet hills? How all fruits, all grains, would thrive! what superb beasts would fatten on the thick spring grass!
They told the truth to the king, but he could not bear to be parted from that slender-handed, gold-haired, thin-lipped, blithe enchantress, and he required them to discover some means whereby he might retain his wife and his crown. There was a way and the magicians told him of it.
This description of The Funeral of Balder is by William Morris: " Guest Gazed through the cool dusk, till his eyes did rest Upon the noble stories, painted fair On the high panelling and roof-boards there; For over the high sea, in his ship, there lay The gold-haired Balder, god of the dead day, The spring-flowers round his high pile, waiting there Until the gods there to the torch should bear; And they were wrought on this side and on that, Drawing on towards him.
Lucretia the gold-haired; the gold-crested serpent, wise as her sire; Aurora breaking the clouds; in short, Clotilde! Her heart exulted to hear him speak her name. She laughed with a radiant face. His being Alvan, and his knowing her and speaking her name, all was like the happy reading of a riddle. He came round to her, bowing, and his hand out.
But his mind was far away with the gold-haired maiden in Hamilton's prison. He scarcely knew what he was saying. "Air ye expectin' to marry Alice Roussillon?" The three men were at the moment eating the well broiled venison. Oncle Jazon's puckered lips and chin were dripping with the fragrant grease and juice, which also flowed down his sinewy, claw-like fingers.
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