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John Masefield

Biography Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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When I am buried all my thoughts and acts	A
Will be reduced to lists of dates and facts	A
And long before this wandering flesh is rotten	B
The dates which made me will be all forgotten	B
And none will know the gleam there used to be	C
About the feast days freshly kept by me	C
But men will call the golden hour of bliss	D
'About this time ' or 'shortly after this '	E
	-
Men do not heed the rungs by which men climb	F
Those glittering steps those milestones upon time	F
Those tombstones of dead selves those hours of birth	G
Those moments of the soul in years of earth	G
They mark the height achieved the main result	H
The power of freedom in the perished cult	H
The power of boredom in the dead man's deeds	I
Not the bright moments of the sprinkled seeds	I
	-
By many waters and on many ways	J
I have known golden instants and bright days	J
The day on which beneath an arching sail	K
I saw the Cordilleras and gave hail	K
The summer day on which in heart's delight	L
I saw the Swansea Mumbles bursting white	L
The glittering day when all the waves wore flags	M
And the ship Wanderer came with sails in rags	M
That curlew calling time in Irish dusk	N
When life became more splendid than its husk	N
When the rent chapel on the brae at Slains	M
Shone with a doorway opening beyond brains	M
The dawn when with a brace block's creaking cry	O
Out of the mist a little barque slipped by	O
Spilling the mist with changing gleams of red	P
Then gone with one raised hand and one turned head	P
The howling evening when the spindrift's mists	M
Broke to display the four Evangelists	M
Snow capped divinely granite lashed by breakers	M
Wind beaten bones of long since buried acres	M
The night alone near water when I heard	Q
All the sea's spirit spoken by a bird	Q
The English dusk when I beheld once more	R
With eyes so changed the ship the citied shore	R
The lines of masts the streets so cheerly trod	S
In happier seasons and gave thanks to God	S
All had their beauty their bright moments' gift	T
Their something caught from Time the ever swift	T
	-
All of those gleams were golden but life's hands	M
Have given more constant gifts in changing lands	M
And when I count those gifts I think them such	U
As no man's bounty could have bettered much	U
The gift of country life near hills and woods	M
Where happy waters sing in solitudes	M
The gift of being near ships of seeing each day	V
A city of ships with great ships under weigh	V
The great street paved with water filled with shipping	W
And all the world's flags flying and seagulls dipping	W
	-
Yet when I am dust my penman may not know	X
Those water trampling ships which made me glow	X
But think my wonder mad and fail to find	Y
Their glory even dimly from my mind	Y
And yet they made me	C
	-
not alone the ships	M
But men hard palmed from tallying on to whips	M
The two close friends of nearly twenty years	M
Sea followers both sea wrestlers and sea peers	M
Whose feet with mine wore many a bolthead bright	L
Treading the decks beneath the riding light	L
Yet death will make that warmth of friendship cold	Z
And who'll know what one said and what one told	Z
Our hearts' communion and the broken spells	M
When the loud call blew at the strike of bells	M
No one I know yet let me be believed	A2
A soul entirely known is life achieved	A2
	-
Years blank with hardship never speak a word	Q
Live in the soul to make the being stirred	Q
Towns can be prisons where the spirit dulls	M
Away from mates and ocean wandering hulls	M
Away from all bright water and great hills	M
And sheep walks where the curlews cry their fills	M
Away in towns where eyes have nought to see	M
But dead museums and miles of misery	M
And floating life un rooted from man's need	B2
And miles of fish hooks baited to catch greed	B2
And life made wretched out of human ken	C2
And miles of shopping women served by men	C2
So if the penman sums my London days	M
Let him but say that there were holy ways	M
Dull Bloomsbury streets of dull brick mansions old	Z
With stinking doors where women stood to scold	Z
And drunken waits at Christmas with their horn	D2
Droning the news in snow that Christ was born	D2
And windy gas lamps and the wet roads shining	W
And that old carol of the midnight whining	W
And that old room above the noisy slum	E2
Where there was wine and fire and talk with some	E2
Under strange pictures of the wakened soul	F2
To whom this earth was but a burnt out coal	F2
	-
O Time bring back those midnights and those friends	M
Those glittering moments that a spirit lends	M
That all may be imagined from the flash	G2
The cloud hid god game through the lightning gash	G2
Those hours of stricken sparks from which men took	H2
Light to send out to men in song or book	H2
Those friends who heard St Pancras' bells strike two	I2
Yet stayed until the barber's cockerel crew	I2
Talking of noble styles the Frenchman's best	J2
The thought beyond great poets not expressed	J2
The glory of mood where human frailty failed	K2
The forts of human light not yet assailed	K2
Till the dim room had mind and seemed to brood	L2
Binding our wills to mental brotherhood	M2
Till we became a college and each night	L
Was discipline and manhood and delight	L
Till our farewells and winding down the stairs	M
At each gray dawn had meaning that Time spares	M
That we so linked should roam the whole world round	N2
Teaching the ways our brooding minds had found	N2
Making that room our Chapter our one mind	Y
Where all that this world soiled should be refined	Y
	-
Often at night I tread those streets again	C2
And see the alleys glimmering in the rain	O2
Yet now I miss that sign of earlier tramps	M
A house with shadows of plane boughs under lamps	M
The secret house where once a beggar stood	M2
Trembling and blind to show his woe for food	L2
And now I miss that friend who used to walk	P2
Home to my lodgings with me deep in talk	P2
Wearing the last of night out in still streets	M
Trodden by us and policemen on their beats	M
And cats but else deserted now I miss	M
That lively mind and guttural laugh of his	M
And that strange way he had of making gleam	Q2
Like something real the art we used to dream	Q2
London has been my prison but my books	M
Hills and great waters labouring men and brooks	M
Ships and deep friendships and remembered days	M
Which even now set all my mind ablaze	M
As that June day when in the red bricks' chinks	M
I saw the old Roman ruins white with pinks	M
And felt the hillside haunted even then	C2
By not dead memory of the Roman men	C2
And felt the hillside thronged by souls unseen	R2
Who knew the interest in me and were keen	R2
That man alive should understand man dead	P
So many centuries since the blood was shed	P
And quickened with strange hush because this comer	S2
Sensed a strange soul alive behind the summer	S2
That other day on Ercall when the stones	M
Were sunbleached white like long unburied bones	M
While the bees droned and all the air was sweet	T2
From honey buried underneath my feet	T2
Honey of purple heather and white clover	S2
Sealed in its gummy bags till summer's over	S2
Then other days by water by bright sea	M
Clear as clean glass and my bright friend with me	M
The cove clean bottomed where we saw the brown	U2
Red spotted plaice go skimming six feet down	U2
And saw the long fronds waving white with shells	M
Waving unfolding drooping to the swells	M
That sadder day when we beheld the great	V2
And terrible beauty of a Lammas spate	V2
Roaring white mouthed in all the great cliff's gaps	M
Headlong tree tumbling fury of collapse	M
While drenching clouds drove by and every sense	M
Was water roaring or rushing or in offence	M
And mountain sheep stood huddled and blown gaps gleamed	W2
Where torn white hair of torrents shook and streamed	W2
That sadder day when we beheld again	C2
A spate going down in sunshine after rain	O2
When the blue reach of water leaping bright	L
Was one long ripple and clatter flecked with white	L
And that far day that never blotted page	X2
When youth was bright like flowers about old age	X2
Fair generations bringing thanks for life	Y2
To that old kindly man and trembling wife	Y2
After their sixty years Time never made	Z2
A better beauty since the Earth was laid	Z2
Than that thanksgiving given to grey hair	A3
For the great gift of life which brought them there	A3
	-
Days of endeavour have been good the days	M
Racing in cutters for the comrade's praise	M
The day they led my cutter at the turn	B3
Yet could not keep the lead and dropped astern	B3
The moment in the spurt when both boats' oars	M
Dipped in each other's wash and throats grew hoarse	M
And teeth ground into teeth and both strokes quickened	C3
Lashing the sea and gasps came and hearts sickened	C3
And coxswains damned us dancing banking stroke	D3
To put our weights on though our hearts were broke	D3
And both boats seemed to stick and sea seemed glue	I2
The tide a mill race we were struggling through	I2
And every quick recover gave us squints	M
Of them still there and oar tossed water glints	M
And cheering came our friends our foemen cheering	W
A long wild rallying murmur on the hearing	W
'Port Fore ' and 'Starboard Fore ' 'Port Fore' 'Port Fore '	-
'Up with her ' 'Starboard' and at that each oar	R
Lightened though arms were bursting and eyes shut	E3
And the oak stretchers grunted in the strut	E3
And the curse quickened from the cox our bows	M
Crashed and drove talking water we made vows	M
Chastity vows and temperance in our pain	B3
We numbered things we'd never eat again	B3
If we could only win then came the yell	F3
'Starboard ' 'Port Fore ' and then a beaten bell	F3
Rung as for fire to cheer us 'Now ' Oars bent	G3
Soul took the looms now body's bolt was spent	G3
'Damn it come on now ' 'On now ' 'On now ' 'Starboard '	-
'Port Fore ' 'Up with her Port' each cutter harboured	G3
Ten eye shut painsick strugglers 'Heave oh heave '	-
Catcalls waked echoes like a shrieking sheave	Y2
'Heave ' and I saw a back then two 'Port Fore '	-
'Starboard ' 'Come on' I saw the midship oar	R
And knew we had done them 'Port Fore ' 'Starboard ' 'Now '	-
I saw bright water spurting at their bow	H3
Their cox' full face an instant They were done	B3
The watchers' cheering almost drowned the gun	B3
We had hardly strength to toss our oars our cry	O
Cheering the losing cutter was a sigh	O
	-
Other bright days of action have seemed great	G3
Wild days in a pampero off the Plate	G3
Good swimming days at Hog Back or the Coves	M
Which the young gannet and the corbie loves	M
Surf swimming between rollers catching breath	I3
Between the advancing grave and breaking death	I3
Then shooting up into the sunbright smooth	J3
To watch the advancing roller bare her tooth	K3
And days of labour also loading hauling	W
Long days at winch or capstan heaving pawling	W
The days with oxen dragging stone from blasting	W
And dusty days in mills and hot days masting	W
Trucking on dust dry deckings smooth like ice	M
And hunts in mighty wool racks after mice	M
Mornings with buckwheat when the fields did blanch	L3
With White Leghorns come from the chicken ranch	L3
Days near the spring upon the sunburnt hill	M3
Plying the maul or gripping tight the drill	M3
Delights of work most real delights that change	N3
The headache life of towns to rapture strange	N3
Not known by townsmen nor imagined health	O3
That puts new glory upon mental wealth	O3
And makes the poor man rich	P3
	-
But that ends too	G3
Health with its thoughts of life and that bright view	G3
That sunny landscape from life's peak that glory	M
And all a glad man's comments on life's story	M
And thoughts of marvellous towns and living men	B3
And what pens tell and all beyond the pen	B3
End and are summed in words so truly dead	G3
They raise no image of the heart and head	G3
The life the man alive the friend we knew	G3
The minds ours argued with or listened to	G3
None but are dead and all life's keenness all	Q3
Is dead as print before the funeral	R3
Even deader after when the dates are sought	G3
And cold minds disagree with what we thought	G3
	-
This many pictured world of many passions	M
Wears out the nations as a woman fashions	M
And what life is is much to very few	G3
Men being so strange so mad and what men do	G3
So good to watch or share but when men count	G3
Those hours of life that were a bursting fount	G3
Sparkling the dusty heart with living springs	M
There seems a world beyond our earthly things	M
Gated by golden moments each bright time	F
Opening to show the city white like lime	F
High towered and many peopled This made sure	S3
Work that obscures those moments seems impure	S3
Making our not returning time of breath	I3
Dull with the ritual and records of death	I3
That frost of fact by which our wisdom gives	M
Correctly stated death to all that lives	M
	-
Best trust the happy moments What they gave	Y2
Makes man less fearful of the certain grave	Y2
And gives his work compassion and new eyes	M
The days that make us happy make us wise	M