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I. MASEFIELD (HIMSELF)
GOD said, and frowned, as He looked on Shropshire clay: | |
| “Alone, ’twont do; composite, would I make | |
| This man-child rare; ’twere well, methinks, to take | |
| A handful from the Stratford tomb, and weigh | |
| A few of Shelley’s ashes; Bunyan may | 5 |
| Contribute, too, and, for my sweet Son’s sake, | |
| I’ll visit Avalon; then, let me slake | |
| The whole with Wyclif-water from the Bay. | |
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| A sailor, he! Too godly, though, I fear; | |
| Offset it with tobacco! Next, I’ll find | 10 |
| Hedge-roses, star-dust, and a vagrant’s mind; | |
| His mother’s heart now let me breathe upon; | |
| When west winds blow, I’ll whisper in her ear: | |
| “Apocalypse awaits him; call him John!” | |
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II. HIS PORTRAIT
A Man of Sorrows! with such haunted eyes, | 15 |
| I trow, the Master looked across the lake,— | |
| Looked from the Judas-heart, so soon to make | |
| Of Him the world’s historic sacrifice; | |
| Moreover, as I gaze, do more arise; | |
| Great souls, great pallid ghosts of pain, who wake | 20 |
| And wander yet; all, weary men who brake | |
| Their hearts; all hemlock-drunk, with growing wise: | |
| Hudson adrift; Defoe; the Wandering Jew; | |
| Tannhauser; Faust; Andrea; phantoms, all, | |
| In Masefield’s eyes you lodge; and to the wall | 25 |
| I turn you,—hand a-tremble,—lest you make | |
| Of mine own stricken eyes a mirror, too. | |
| Wherein the sad world’s sadder for your sake. | |
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III. HIS “DAUBER”
O Masefield’s “Dauber!” You, who being dead, | |
| Yet speak: heroic, dauntless, flaming soul, | 30 |
| Too suddenly snuffed out! Here take fresh toll | |
| Of cognizance, and, in your ocean bed, | |
| Serenely rest, assured that who has read | |
| What you would fain have pictured of the Pole | |
| Would gladly match your part against the whole | 35 |
| Of many a modern artist, Paris-bred. | |
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| And more than this: if you, indeed, are his, | |
| Then, by a dual truth, he, too, is yours; | |
| For, marked and credited by what endures, | |
| Were it the only thing, which bears his name, | 40 |
| (O deathless Soul, I speak you true in this!) | |
| “The Dauber” has brought Masefield to his fame. | |
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IV. HIS “GALLIPOLI”
“Small wonder,” speaks my pensive self, “that he | |
| Whose passion ’tis to sing of men who fail,— | |
| (Belabored, broken by The Unseen Flail) | 45 |
| Small wonder that be makes Gallipoli | |
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| His fervent text, for could there be | |
| A costlier failure in Earth’s shuddering tale? | |
| Think of heroic Sulva’s bloody swale; | |
| Of Anzac’s tortured thirst and agony!” | 50 |
| But as I read, protesting voices cry: “Not we, | |
| Not we, who fell among the daffodils, | |
| Who conquered Death among those blistered hills, | |
| And found our glory after mortal pain; | |
| Not we, who failed and lost Gallipoli; | 55 |
| The sad, strange failure theirs who mourn in vain!” | |
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V. HIS MEAD
So, Masefield, have your royal words once more | |
| Called forth the praise of men, where praise is due; | |
| Your great elegiac, tragically true, | |
| Must leave all Britain prouder than before; | 60 |
| And, in spite of all that breaking hearts deplore, | |
| And all that anguished consciences must rue, | |
| One arrowed gladness surely pierces through | |
| From London’s centre to Canadian shore: | |
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| When England, sobbing, mourns Gallipoli, | 65 |
| When warm tears flow for Rupert Brooke | |
| And all the splendid Youth her error took | |
| As hostage from the fields of daffodils, | |
| Let this a present, living solace be: | |
| You are not sleeping in those cruel hills! | 70 |
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