The Pilgrims of Hope

Book excerpt: William Morris never tired of defending the Paris Commune and glorifying its memory. To him it was the highest point yet reached in the workers' struggle, and it was next to inevitable that he should turn to it when seeking a theme for a socialist poem. The Pilgrims of Hope resembles all his long poems in its heroic character. Alongside an introduction and notes on the poem by Michael Rosen this volume contains the essay, Why We Celebrate the Paris Commune by William Morris and as an afterword the introduction by Frederick Engels to the twentieth anniversary publication of Marx's The Civil War in France.