THE BRIAR ROSE

The fateful slumber floats and flows
About the tangle of the rose.
But lo the fated hand and heart
To rend the slumberous curse apart.

The threat of war, the hope of peace,
The Kingdom’s peril and increase.
Sleep on, and bide the latter day
When fate shall take her chains away.

The maiden pleasance of the land
Knoweth no stir of voice or hand,
No cup the sleeping waters fill,
The restless shuttle lieth still.

Here lies the hoarded love the key
To all the treasure that shall be.
Come, fated hand, the gift to take
And smite the sleeping world awake.

In 1865 Edward Burne-Jones designed tiles for William Morris's decorating business Morris & Co, with images of Sleeping Beauty in a Briar Rose bower. His first painting on the theme came five years later, but it was not until 1885 that he began the four great canvases, finished in 1890, with a poem by Morris, bought by his dealers Agnew for £15,000 and sensationally exhibited to huge crowds in London and Liverpool. They were sold to financier Lord Faringdon, who hung them at Buscot Park, his house in Oxfordshire. Burne-Jones, staying nearby with Morris at Kelmscott, was unhappy with the hanging, and designed the renaissance-style frames and panelling, adding narrow canvases that continued the rose motif, to complete the room.

There is no narrative; the pictures capture a single moment, when the knight (top left) steps into the rose bower to see the sleeping soldiers, court, people... and the princess on the far wall (below,) who waits for his kiss, 'the sleeping world to awake.' Morris and Burne-Jones dreamed of a return to what they saw as the lost idyll of mediaeval craftsmanship and beauty, far from the modern industrial age: ironically, Lord Faringdon made his millions financing railways. The room has a unique beauty, with Empire furniture and Chinese porcelain, a lovely view of the park, and the extraordinary, dreamy langour of Burne-Jones's great masterpiece.