<h2><SPAN name="chap13"></SPAN>JOHN MASEFIELD</h2>
<h5>I</h5>
<h5>MASEFIELD (HIMSELF)</h5>
<p class="poem">
God said, and frowned, as He looked on Shropshire clay:<br/>
“Alone, ’twont do; composite, would I make<br/>
This man-child rare; ’twere well, methinks, to take<br/>
A handful from the Stratford tomb, and weigh<br/>
A few of Shelley’s ashes; Bunyan may<br/>
Contribute, too, and, for my sweet Son’s sake,<br/>
I’ll visit Avalon; then, let me slake<br/>
The whole with Wyclif-water from the Bay.<br/>
<br/>
A sailor, he! Too godly, though, I fear;<br/>
Offset it with tobacco! Next, I’ll find<br/>
Hedge-roses, star-dust, and a vagrant’s mind;<br/>
His mother’s heart now let me breathe upon;<br/>
When west winds blow, I’ll whisper in her ear:<br/>
“Apocalypse awaits him; call him John!”<br/></p>
<h5>II</h5>
<h5>HIS PORTRAIT</h5>
<p class="poem">
A Man of Sorrows! with such haunted eyes,<br/>
I trow, the Master looked across the lake,—<br/>
Looked from the Judas-heart, so soon to make<br/>
Of Him the world’s historic sacrifice;<br/>
Moreover, as I gaze, do more arise;<br/>
Great souls, great pallid ghosts of pain, who wake<br/>
And wander yet; all, weary men who brake<br/>
<br/>
Their hearts; all hemlock-drunk, with growing wise:<br/>
Hudson adrift; Defoe; the Wandering Jew;<br/>
Tannhauser; Faust; Andrea; phantoms, all,<br/>
In Masefield’s eyes you lodge; and to the wall<br/>
I turn you,—hand a-tremble,—lest you make<br/>
Of mine own stricken eyes a mirror, too.<br/>
Wherein the sad world’s sadder for your sake.<br/></p>
<h5>III</h5>
<h5>HIS “DAUBER”</h5>
<p class="poem">
O Masefield’s “Dauber!” You, who being dead,<br/>
Yet speak: heroic, dauntless, flaming soul,<br/>
Too suddenly snuffed out! Here take fresh toll<br/>
Of cognizance, and, in your ocean bed,<br/>
Serenely rest, assured that who has read<br/>
What you would fain have pictured of the Pole<br/>
Would gladly match your part against the whole<br/>
Of many a modern artist, Paris-bred.<br/>
<br/>
And more than this: if you, indeed, are his,<br/>
Then, by a dual truth, he, too, is yours;<br/>
For, marked and credited by what endures,<br/>
Were it the only thing, which bears his name,<br/>
(O deathless Soul, I speak you true in this!)<br/>
“The Dauber” has brought Masefield to his fame.<br/></p>
<h5>IV</h5>
<h5>HIS “GALLIPOLI”</h5>
<p class="poem">
“Small wonder,” speaks my pensive self, “that he<br/>
Whose passion ’tis to sing of men who fail,—<br/>
(Belabored, broken by The Unseen Flail)<br/>
Small wonder that be makes Gallipoli<br/>
<br/>
His fervent text, for could there be<br/>
A costlier failure in Earth’s shuddering tale?<br/>
Think of heroic Sulva’s bloody swale;<br/>
Of Anzac’s tortured thirst and agony!”<br/>
But as I read, protesting voices cry: “Not we,<br/>
Not we, who fell among the daffodils,<br/>
Who conquered Death among those blistered hills,<br/>
And found our glory after mortal pain;<br/>
Not we, who failed and lost Gallipoli;<br/>
The sad, strange failure theirs who mourn in vain!”<br/></p>
<h5>V</h5>
<h5>HIS MEAD</h5>
<p class="poem">
So, Masefield, have your royal words once more<br/>
Called forth the praise of men, where praise is due;<br/>
Your great elegiac, tragically true,<br/>
Must leave all Britain prouder than before;<br/>
And, in spite of all that breaking hearts deplore,<br/>
And all that anguished consciences must rue,<br/>
One arrowed gladness surely pierces through<br/>
From London’s centre to Canadian shore:<br/>
<br/>
When England, sobbing, mourns Gallipoli,<br/>
When warm tears flow for Rupert Brooke<br/>
And all the splendid Youth her error took<br/>
As hostage from the fields of daffodils,<br/>
Let this a present, living solace be:<br/>
You are not sleeping in those cruel hills!<br/></p>
<p class="left">
AMY BRIDGEMAN</p>
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