John Masefield

“ He lay dead on the cluttered deck and stared at the cold skies,
With never a friend to mourn for him nor a hand to close his eyes:
‘Bill, he’s dead,’ was all they said; ‘he’s dead, ’n’ there he lies.’
The mate came forrard at seven bells and spat across the rail:
‘Just lash him up wi’ some holystone in a clout o’ rotten sail,
’N’, rot ye, get a gait on ye, ye’re slower’n a bloody snail!’
When the rising moon was a copper disc and the sea was a strip of steel,
We dumped him down to the swaying weeds ten fathom beneath the keel. ”

“ The crowd’s at the capstan and the tune’s in the shout,
‘A long pull, a strong pull, and warp the hooker out.’
The bow-wash is eddying, spreading from the bows,
Aloft and loose the topsails and some one give a rouse;
A salt Atlantic chanty shall be music to the dead,
‘A long pull, a strong pull, and the yard to the mast-head.’
Green and merry run the seas, the wind comes cold,
Salt and strong and pleasant, and worth a mint of gold;{53}
And she’s staggering, swooping, as she feels her feet,
‘A long pull, a strong pull, and aft the main-sheet.’ ”

“ THE TARRY BUCCANEER
I’m going to be a pirate with a bright brass pivot-gun,
And an island in the Spanish Main beyond the setting sun,
And a silver flagon full of red wine to drink when work is done,
Like a fine old salt-sea scavenger, like a tarry Buccaneer. ”

“ Masefield comes like a flash of light across contemporary English poetry, and he trails glory where his imaginations reveals the substances of life. The improbable has been accomplished by Mr. Masefield; he has made poetry out of the very material that has refused to yield it for almost a score of years. ”

“ And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.{60}
I must down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
{61}
A WANDERER’S SONG
A wind’s in the heart of me, a fire’s in my heels,
I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon-wheels;
I hunger for the sea’s edge, the limits of the land,
Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the sand. ”

“ And the mewing of the herring gulls.
Dancing, flashing green seas shaking white locks,
Boiling in blind eddies over hidden rocks,
And the wind in the rigging, the creaking of the blocks,
And the straining of the timber hulls.
Delicate, cool sea-weeds, green and amber-brown,
In beds where shaken sunlight slowly filters down
On many a drowned seventy-four, many a sunken town,
And the whitening of the dead men’s skulls.
{64}
CHRISTMAS EVE AT SEA
A wind is rustling ‘south and soft,’
Cooing a quiet country tune,
The calm sea sighs, and far aloft
The sails are ghostly in the moon. ”

“ The “Esmeralda,” casual tramp, from Hull towards the Hook,
Wi’ one o’ the brand o’ Cain for mate ’n’ a human mistake for cook.
‘We’d a week or so of dippin’ around in a wind from outer hell,
With a fathom or more of broken sea at large in the forrard well,
Till our boats were bashed and bust and broke and gone to Davy Jones,
’N’ then come white Atlantic fog as chilled us to the bones. ”

“ With a word here of the hills, and a song there of the sea,
And—the great movement changes—the pageant passes me. ”

“ To twist the tarry lengths of yarn to shapely sailor stuff.
Life is nothing but spunyarn on a winch in need of oil,
Little enough is twined and spun but fever-fret and moil.
I have travelled on land and sea, and all that I have found
Are these poor songs to brace the arms that help the winches round. ”

“ To the Bright Beach of the Blessed Isles.{83}
‘In the wind’s teeth and the spray’s stinging
Westward and outward forth we go,
Knowing not whither nor why, but singing
An old old oar-song as we row.
A long pull,
And a long long pull to Mydath.’{84}
SORROW OF MYDATH
Weary the cry of the wind is, weary the sea,
Weary the heart and the mind and the body of me. ”

“ Rather the scorned—the rejected—the men hemmed in with the spears;
The men of the tattered battalion which fights till it dies,
Dazed with the dust of the battle, the din and the cries,
The men with the broken heads and the blood running into their eyes. ”

“ It’s a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds’ cries;
I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes.
For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills,
And April’s in the west wind, and daffodils. ”

“ Heaven to me’s a fair blue stretch of sky,
Earth’s jest a dusty road. ”

“ So I gives ’im a ’and, ’n’ be shot if it wasn’t the stooard!
‘So he climbs up forrard o’ me, ’n’ “thanky,” a’ says,
’N’ we sits ’n’ shivers ’n’ freeze to the bone wi’ the sprays,
’N’ I sings “Abel Brown,” ’n’ the stooard he prays.
‘Wi’ never a dollop to sup nor a morsel to bite,
The lips of us blue with the cold ’n’ the heads of us light,
Adrift in a Cape Horn sea for a day ’n’ a night.
‘ ’N’ then the stooard goes dotty ’n’ puts a tune to his lip,
’N’ moans about Love like a dern old hen wi’ the pip—
(I sets no store upon stooards—they ain’t no use on a ship) .{10} ”

“ Where crews is always layin’ aft for double-tots o’ rum,
’N’ there’s dancin’ ’n’ fiddlin’ of ev’ry kind o’ sort,
It’s a fine place for sailor-men is that there port.
’N’ I wish—
I wish as I was there.
‘The winds is never nothin’ more than jest light airs,
’N’ no-one gets belayin’-pinned, ’n’ no-one never swears,
Yer free to loaf an’ laze around, yer pipe atween yer lips,
Lollin’ on the fo’c’s’le, sonny, lookin’ at the ships.
’N’ I wish—
I wish as I was there.{41}
‘For ridin’ in the anchorage the ships of all the world
Have got one anchor down ’n’ all sails furled. ”

“ FEVER SHIP
There’ll be no weepin’ gells ashore when our ship sails,
Nor no crews cheerin’ us, standin’ at the rails,
’N’ no Blue Peter a-foul the royal stay,
For we’ve the Yellow Fever—Harry died to-day.—
It’s cruel when a fo’c’s’le gets the fever!
’N’ Dick has got the fever-shakes, ’n’ look what I was told
(I went to get a sack for him to keep him from the cold) :
‘Sir, can I have a sack?’ I says, ‘for Dick ’e’s fit to die.’
‘Oh, sack be shot!’ the skipper says, ‘jest let the rotter lie!’—
It’s cruel when a fo’c’s’le gets the fever!{16} ”

“ Loafin’ around in Sailor Town, a-bluin’ o’ my advance,
I met a derelict donkeyman who led me a merry dance,
Till he landed me ’n’ bleached me fair in the bar of a rum-saloon,
’N’ there he spun me a juice of a yarn to this-yer brand of tune.
‘It’s a solemn gospel, mate,’ he says, ‘but a man as ships aboard
A steamer-tramp, he gets his whack of the wonders of the Lord—
Such as roaches crawlin’ over his bunk, ’n’ snakes inside his bread,
And work by night and work by day enough to strike him dead.{20}
‘But that there’s by the way,’ says he ”

“ With a herring, maybe, a-scoffin’ a toe or a shark a-chewin’ a limb.
‘ ’N’ all the night the shiverin’ corp it has to swim the sea,
With its shudderin’ soul inside the throat (where a soul’s no right to be) ,
Till the sky’s grey ’n’ the dawn’s clear, ’n’ then the sperrit’s free. ”

“ When the stars are mellow and large at the coming on of the night.{95}
O! to feel the warmth of the rain, and the homely smell of the earth,
Is a tune for the blood to jig to, a joy past power of words ”

“ So as me ’n’ my mate kin dine.’{49}
She’s a hungry old rip ’n’ a cruel
For sailor-men like we,
She’s give a many mariners the gruel
’N’ a long sleep under sea.
She’s the blood o’ many a crew upon her
’N’ the bones of many a wreck,
’N’ she’s barnacles a-growin’ on her
’N’ shark’s teeth round her neck.
I ain’t never had no schoolin’
Nor read no books like you,
But I knows ’t ain’t healthy to be foolin’
With that there gristly two.
You’re young, you thinks, ’n’ you’re lairy,
But if you’re to make old bones,
Steer clear, I says, o’ Mother Carey,
’N’ that there Davy Jones. ”

“ Grant the last prayer that I shall pray, Be good to me, O Lord! ”

“ And the topsail blocks a-piping when a rope-yarn fouls the sheave.
Give me a sup of lime-juice; Lord, I’m drifting in to port,
The landfall lies to windward and the wind comes light and short,
And I’m for signing off and out to take my watch below,
And—prop a fellow, Jakey—Lord, it’s time for me to go!
{31}
THE TURN OF THE TIDE
An’ Bill can have my sea-boots, Nigger Jim can have my knife,
You can divvy up the dungarees an’ bed,
An’ the ship can have my blessing, an’ the Lord can have my life,
An’ sails an’ fish my body when I’m dead. ”

“ Never in prose has the sea been so tremendously described.”—Chicago Evening Post.
“Masefield’s new book attracts the widest attention from those who in any degree are interested in the quality of present-day literature.”—Boston Transcript.
“A remarkable poem of the sea.”—San Francisco Chronicle.
“Vivid and thrillingly realistic.”—Current Literature.
“A genuine sailor and a genuine poet are a rare combination; they have produced a rare poem of the sea, which has made Mr. Masefield’s position in literature secure beyond the reach of caviling.”—Everybody’s Magazine. ”

“ Bull of Barney.—A beast mentioned in an unquotable sea-proverb.
Bumpkin.—An iron bar (projecting out-board from the ship’s side) to which the lower and topsail brace blocks are sometimes hooked.{110}
Cape Horn fever.—The illness proper to malingerers.
Catted.—Said of an anchor when weighed and secured to the ‘cat-head.’
Chanty.—A song sung to lighten labour at the capstan sheets, and halliards. The soloist is known as the chanty-man, and is usually a person of some authority in the fo’c’s’le. Many chanties are of great beauty and extreme antiquity. ”

“ But their ain’t none o’ them fine ways for us poor sailor-men.
‘But the Chief comes forrard ’n’ he says, says he, “I gives you a straight tip:
Come none o’ your Cape Horn fever lays aboard o’ this yer ship.
On wi’ your rags o’ duds, my son, ’n’ aft, ’n’ down the hole:
The best cure known for fever-chills is shovelling bloody coal.” ”

“ Of the steady Trade Winds blowing.
And o’ nights there’s fire-flies and the yellow moon,
And in the ghostly palm-trees the sleepy tune
Of the quiet voice calling me, the long low croon
Of the steady Trade Winds blowing. ”

“ He had to pinch a little straw, he had to beg a sack
To sleep on, when his watch was through,—
So he did.
{27}
SEA-CHANGE
‘Goneys an’ gullies an’ all o’ the birds o’ the sea,
They ain’t no birds, not really,’ said Billy the Dane.
Not mollies, nor gullies, nor goneys at all,’ said he,
‘But simply the sperrits of mariners livin’ again.
‘Them birds goin’ fishin’ is nothin’ but souls o’ the drowned,
Souls o’ the drowned an’ the kicked as are never no more ”

“ Cloth, 12mo. Preparing
As a sailor before the mast Masefield has traveled the world over. Many of the tales in this volume are his own experiences written with the same dramatic fidelity displayed in “Dauber.”
The Tragedy of Pompey
Cloth, 12mo. Preparing
A play such as only the author of “Nan” could have written. Tense in situation and impressive in its poetry it conveys Masefield’s genius in the handling of the dramatic form.
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
{116}64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
JOHN MASEFIELD’S
The Everlasting Mercy, and The
Widow in the Bye Street
Cloth, $1.25 net ”