Poems by John Masefield

All Poems Original Poems Translations

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A Valediction

We're bound for blue water where the great winds blow,

It's time to get the tacks aboard, time for us to go;

The crowd's at the capstan and the tune's in the shout,

"A long pull, a strong pull, and warp the hooker out."

The bow-wash is eddying, spreading from the bows,

Aloft and loose the topsails and some one give a rouse;

A salt-Atlantic chanty shall be music to the dead,

"A long pull, a strong pull, and the yard to the masthead."

by John Masefield

The Everlasting Mercy

Thy place is biggyd above the sterrys cleer,

Noon erthely paleys wrouhte in so statly wyse,

Com on my freend, my brothir moost enteer,

For the I offryd my blood in sacrifise.

John Lydgate.

From '41 to '51

I was folk's contrary son;

I bit my father's hand right through

by John Masefield

The Lemmings

Once in a hundred years the Lemmings come

Westward, in search of food, over the snow;

Westward until the salt sea drowns them dumb;

Westward, till all are drowned, those Lemmings go.

Once, it is thought, there was a westward land

Now drowned where there was food for those starved things,

And memory of the place has burnt its brand

In the little brains of all the Lemming Kings.

by John Masefield

The West Wind

It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries;

I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes.

For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills.

And April's in the west wind, and daffodils.

It's a fine land, the west land, for hearts as tired as mine,

Apple orchards blossom there, and the air's like wine.

There is cool green grass there, where men may lie at rest,

And the thrushes are in song there, fluting from the nest.

by John Masefield

Reynard the Fox - Part 1

The meet was at "The Cock and Pye

By Charles and Martha Enderby,"

The grey, three-hundred-year-old inn

Long since the haunt of Benjamin

The highwayman, who rode the bay.

The tavern fronts the coaching way,

The mail changed horses there of old.

It has a strip of grassy mould

by John Masefield

A Ballad of John Silver

We were schooner-rigged and rakish, with a long and lissome hull,

And we flew the pretty colours of the cross-bones and the skull;

We'd a big black Jolly Roger flapping grimly at the fore,

And we sailed the Spanish Water in the happy days of yore.

We'd a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted ship,

We had each a brace of pistols and a cutlass at the hip;

It's a point which tells against us, and a fact to be deplored,

But we chased the goodly merchant-men and laid their ships aboard.

by John Masefield

Reynard The Fox - Part 2

On old Cold Crendon's windy tops

Grows wintrily Blown Hilcote Copse,

Wind-bitten beech with badger barrows,

Where brocks eat wasp-grubs with their marrows,

And foxes lie on short-grassed turf,

Nose between paws, to hear the surf

Of wind in the beeches drowsily.

There was our fox bred lustily

by John Masefield

Laugh and be Merry

Laugh and be merry, remember, better the world with a song,

Better the world with a blow in the teeth of a wrong.

Laugh, for the time is brief, a thread the length of a span.

Laugh and be proud to belong to the old proud pageant of man.

Laugh and be merry: remember, in olden time.

God made Heaven and Earth for joy He took in a rhyme,

Made them, and filled them full with the strong red wine of

His mirth

by John Masefield

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,

by John Masefield

Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,

And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

by John Masefield