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.

Oh I'll be going, leaving the noises of the street,
To where a lifting foresail-foor is yanking at the sheet;
To a windy, tossing anchorage where yawls and ketches ride,
Oh I'll be going, going, until I meet the tide.
from A Wanderer's Song

Readers are again turning to the work of John Masefield (1878-1967) for its verbal skill, thematic range and a human generosity and warmth rare in the poetry of our time. Masefield looked to Browning rather than Tennyson as a model, hence the rich texture of his verse and the centrality of the speaking voice. He can be an exquisite lyricist and elegist; he is also a balladeer, a master of light verse and, as Gavin Ewart has said,
`a first-class narrative poet, the last full-blown one we have had.'

Masefield was born in Ledbury, Herefordshire, where he had an idyllic early childhood. At 16 he went to sea in the merchant navy, but soon left the navy for two years of wandering in America. Back in England he published his Salt-Water Ballads in 1902. It was a confident beginning, and the books that followed earned him a wide readership; his Collected Poems eventually sold 200,000 copies. In 1930 he succeeded his friend Robert Bridges as Poet Laureate.

Donald E. Stanford, the American poet, critic and editor, made this representative selection from Masefield's prolific output, and provides a biographical introduction.

Table of Contents

Introduction

A Consecration



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEMS

Biography

Wonderings

Land Workers

C.L.M.

Remembering Dame Myra Hess

For Luke O'Connor

On Growing Old



SEA POEMS

Sea-Fever

the Wanderer

Ships

The River

A Wanderer's Song

Spanish Waters

Cargoes

Captain Stratton's Fancy

The Pathfinder

Campeachy Picture

A Ballad of Sir Francis Drake

The Lemmings

The Crowd

Under Three Lower Topsails

Porto Bello

Lines on the Shipwreck



OF COUNTRY THINGS

A Tale of Country Things

From Lollingdon Downs

   Midnight

   Up on the downs the red-eyed kestrels hover

   Here the legions halted, here the ranks were broken

Blown Hilcote Manor

Pawn to Bishop's Five

Ryemeadows

The West Wind

The Wind

Partridges

The Curlews

The Hill

Old England

The Bluebells

Middle Farm

Shopping in Oxford



GREEKS, TROJANS, ROMANS

The Taking of Helen

The Surprise

Fragments

The Rider at the Gate



ARTHUR AND TRISTAN

The Begetting of Arthur

The Fight on the Wall

The Love Gift

Tristan's Singing



BEAUTY, LOVE, DEATH

Sonnets

   Night came again, but now I could not sleep

   If I could come again to that dear place

   Flesh, I have knocked on many a dusty door

   So in the empty sky the stars appear

   I never see the red rose crown the year

   Out of the clouds come torrents

   Is there a great green commonwealth of Though

   Wherever beauty has been quick in clay

   They called that broken hedge The Haunted Gate

   There was an evil in the nodding wood

   The little robin hopping in the wood

Waste

I Dreamed

Sitting Alone



NARRATIVE POEMS

Dauber

Reynard the Fox

A Creed



Index of first lines