"The Haystack in the Floods", is a narrative poem of 160 lines by William Morris

William Morris

William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

, first published in The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems in 1858. It is probably his best-known poem. It is a grimly realistic piece set during the Hundred Years' War

Hundred Years' War

The Hundred Years' War was a series of separate wars waged from 1337 to 1453 by the House of Valois and the House of Plantagenet, also known as the House of Anjou, for the French throne, which had become vacant upon the extinction of the senior Capetian line of French kings...

 in which the doomed lovers Jehane and Robert, having been chased down by Godmar and his knights, have a last parting in a convincingly portrayed rain-swept French countryside.

Three passages from it are most often quoted:

The in medias res

In medias res

In medias res or medias in res is a Latin phrase denoting the literary and artistic narrative technique wherein the relation of a story begins either at the mid-point or at the conclusion, rather than at the beginning In medias res or medias in res (into the middle of things) is a Latin phrase...

opening:

Had she come all the way for this,

To part at last without a kiss?

Yea, had she borne the dirt and rain

That her own eyes might see him slain

Beside the haystack in the floods?

Godmar's threat to Jehane:

Eh? lies my Jehane? by God's head,

At Paris folks would deem them true!

Do you know, Jehane, they cry for you,

'Jehane the brown! Jehane the brown!

Give us Jehane to burn or drown!'

And the forlorn conclusion, following Robert's brutal slaying by Godmar:

She shook her head and gazed awhile

At her cold hands with a rueful smile,

As though this thing had made her mad.

This was the parting that they had

Beside the haystack in the floods.

The poem succeeds because of its narrative pace, rather than ostentatiously-crafted language. It was one of the poems from Morris' early romantic period which were brought to the fore by historian E. P. Thompson

E. P. Thompson

Edward Palmer Thompson was a British historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the British radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class...

(himself a published poet) in his 1955 biography of Morris.

External links

• University of Toronto: "The Haystack in the Floods"