Westward Walking… 

…to Find, at Last, the Hollow Land

A lone haggard man on a bony nag
at the beck of a dying sun,
an impoverished disc where the earth meets the sky,
a bleak eye reflected in water which lies
in every rut crowding his way –
each one with its sullen brown surface;
each one with its rim hoary-rimed.
A weak eye – but resolute, compelling him on.

And the landscape is drear, one of broken abodes,
scattered as promises along the gaunt miles.
A few bare-branched trees, mildewed blue-green,
the crows hunched upon them like ragged black lies.
He rides on, resigned, to the edge of the world
and away from a past he could never descry,
nor revise, nor relive, nor reclaim,
that he used in the one way allotted to him.
It had flickered, and faltered, and was guttering, now –
but had burned, all along, in the one way he knew.

(From ‘Memories, Moods, Reflections’ )


Do you know where it is – the Hollow Land?
I have been looking for it now so long, trying to find it again — the Hollow Land — for there I saw my love first. I wish to tell you how I found it first of all; but I am old, my memory fails me… but what time have we to look for it, or any good thing; with such biting carking cares hemming us in on every side – cares about great things… or rather little things enough, if we only knew it. Lives past in turmoil, in making one another unhappy… making those sad whom God has not made sad… what chance for any of us to find the Hollow Land?

[From ‘Struggling in the World’, Chapter 1 of The Hollow Land, an early romance of William Morris first published in The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine in October, 1856.]


…to Find, at Last, the Hollow Land  is my extended rendition, modelled on and adapted from a song by the Yuan Dynasty’s Ma Chih-yuan (c.1260 – c. 1324 CE).