John Masefield

SHIPS

I cannot tell their wonder nor make known

Magic that once thrilled through me to the bone;

But all men praise some beauty, tell some tale,

Vent a high mood which makes the rest seem pale,

Pour their heart’s blood to flourish one green leaf,

Follow some Helen for her gift of grief,

And fail in what they mean, whate’er they do:

You should have seen, man cannot tell to you

The beauty of the ships of that my city.

That beauty now is spoiled by the sea’s pity;

For one may haunt the pier a score of times,

Hearing St. Nicholas bells ring out the chimes,

Yet never see those proud ones swaying home

With mainyards backed and bows a cream of foam,

Those bows so lovely-curving, cut so fine,

Those coulters of the many-bubbled brine,

As once, long since, when all the docks were filled

With that sea-beauty man has ceased to build.

Yet, though their splendor may have ceased to be

Each played her sovereign part in making me;

Now I return my thanks with heart and lips

For the great queenliness of all those ships.

And first the first bright memory, still so clear,

An autumn evening in a golden year,

When in the last lit moments before dark

The Chepica, a steel-gray lovely barque,

201Came to an anchor near us on the flood,

Her trucks aloft in sun-glow red as blood.

Then come so many ships that I could fill

Three docks with their fair hulls remembered still,

Each with her special memory’s special grace,

Riding the sea, making the waves give place

To delicate high beauty; man’s best strength,

Noble in every line in all their length.

Ailsa, Genista, ships, with long jibbooms,

The Wanderer with great beauty and strange dooms,

Liverpool (mightiest then) superb, sublime,

The California huge, as slow as time.

The Copley swift, the perfect J. T. North,

The loveliest barque my city has sent forth,

Dainty John Lockett well remembered yet,

The splendid Argus with her skysail set,

Stalwart Drumcliff, white-blocked, majestic Sierras,

Divine bright ships, the water’s standard-bearers;

Melpomene, Euphrosyne, and their sweet

Sea-troubling sisters of the Fernie fleet;

Corunna (in whom my friend died) and the old

Long since loved Esmeralda long since sold.

Centurion passed in Rio, Glaucus spoken,

Aladdin burnt, the Bidston water-broken,

Yola, in whom my friend sailed, Dawpool trim,

Fierce-bowed Egeria plunging to the swim,

Stanmore wide-sterned, sweet Cupica, tall Bard,

Queen in all harbors with her moon-sail yard.

Though I tell many, there must still be others,

McVickar Marshall’s ships and Fernie Brothers’,

Lochs, Counties, Shires, Drums, the countless lines

Whose house-flags all were once familiar signs

At high main-trucks on Mersey’s windy ways

When sunlight made the wind-white water blaze.

202Their names bring back old mornings, when the docks

Shone with their house-flags and their painted blocks,

Their raking masts below the Custom House

And all the marvellous beauty of their bows.

Familiar steamers, too, majestic steamers,

Shearing Atlantic roller-tops to streamers,

Umbria, Etruria, noble, still at sea,

The grandest, then, that man had brought to be.

Majestic, City of Paris, City of Rome,

Forever jealous racers, out and home.

The Alfred Holt’s blue smoke-stacks down the stream,

The fair Loanda with her bows a-cream.

Booth liners, Anchor liners, Red Star liners,

The marks and styles of countless ship-designers,

The Magdalena, Puno, Potosi,

Lost Cotopaxi, all well known to me.

These splendid ships, each with her grace, her glory,

Her memory of old song or comrade’s story,

Still in my mind the image of life’s need,

Beauty in hardest action, beauty indeed.

“They built great ships and sailed them,” sounds most brave,

Whatever arts we have or fail to have.

I touch my country’s mind, I come to grips

With half her purpose, thinking of these ships:

That art untouched by softness, all that line

Drawn ringing hard to stand the test of brine;

That nobleness and grandeur, all that beauty

Born of a manly life and bitter duty;

That splendor of fine bows which yet could stand

The shock of rollers never checked by land;

That art of masts, sail-crowded, fit to break,

Yet stayed to strength and backstayed into rake;

The life demanded by that art, the keen

203Eye-puckered, hard-case seamen, silent, lean.

They are grander things than all the art of towns;

Their tests are tempests and the sea that drowns.

They are my country’s line, her great art done

By strong brains laboring on the thought unwon.

They mark our passage as a race of men—

Earth will not see such ships as those again.

CARGOES

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,

Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,

With a cargo of ivory,

And apes and peacocks,

Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,

Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,

With a cargo of diamonds,

Emeralds, amethysts,

Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke-stack,

Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,

With a cargo of Tyne coal,

Road-rails, pig-lead,

Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

WATCHING BY A SICK-BED

I heard the wind all day,

And what it was trying to say.

I heard the wind all night

Rave as it ran to fight;

204After the wind the rain,

And then the wind again

Running across the hill

As it runs still.

And all day long the sea

Would not let the land be,

But all night heaped her sand

On to the land;

I saw her glimmer white

All through the night,

Tossing the horrid hair

Still tossing there.

And all day long the stone

Felt how the wind was blown;

And all night long the rock

Stood the sea’s shock;

While, from the window, I

Looked out, and wondered why,

Why at such length

Such force should fight such strength.

WHAT AM I, LIFE?

What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt

Held in cohesion by unresting cells,

Which work they know not why, which never halt,

Myself unwitting where their Master dwells.

I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin

A world which uses me as I use them;

Nor do I know which end or which begin

Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn.

So, like a marvel in a marvel set,

I answer to the vast, as wave by wave

205The sea of air goes over, dry or wet,

Or the full moon comes swimming from her cave,

Or the great sun comes forth: this myriad I

Tingles, not knowing how, yet wondering why.