Poems by John Masefield

All Poems Original Poems Translations

1 2 3 4 › »

Port Of Many Ships

It's a sunny pleasant anchorage is Kingdom Come

Where the crew is always layin' aft with double-tots o' rum

'N' there's dancin' and there's fiddlin' of ev'ry kind o' sort

It's a fine place for sailormen is that there port.

'N' I wish --

I wish as I was there.

The winds is never nothin' more than jest light airs

'N' no one gets belayin' pinned, 'n' no-one never swears

John Masefield

One of the Bo'sun's Yarns

Loafin' around in Sailor Town, a-bluin' o' my advance,

I met a derelict donkyman who led me a merry dance,

Till he landed me 'n blanched me fair in the bar of a rum-saloon,

'N' there he spun me a juice of a yarn to this-yer brand of tune.

'It's a solomn gospel, mate,' he says, 'but a man as ships abroad

A steamer-tramp, he gets his whack of the wonders of the Lord --

Such as roaches crawlin' over his bunk, 'n' snakes inside his bread,

And work by night and work by day enough to strike him dead.

John Masefield

Sonnet II

Forget all these, the barren fool in power,

The madman in command, the jealous O,

The bitter world, biting its bitter hour,

The cruel now, the happy long ago.

Forget all these, for, though they truly hurt,

Even to the soul, they are not lasting things,

Men are no gods, men tread the city dirt,

But in our souls we can be queens and kings.

John Masefield

Fragments

Troy Town is covered up with weeds,

The rabbits and the pismires brood

On broken gold, and shards, and beads

Where Priam's ancient palace stood.

The floors of many a gallant house

Are matted with the roots of grass;

The glow-worm and the nimble mouse

Among her ruins flit and pass.

John Masefield

The Wild Duck

TwilightT. Red in the West.

Dimness. A glow on the wood.

The teams plod home to rest.

The wild duck come to glean.

O souls not understood,

What a wild cry in the pool;

What things have the farm ducks seen

That they cry so--huddle and cry?

John Masefield

Twilight

Twilight it is, and the far woods are dim, and the rooks

cry and call.

Down in the valley the lamps, and the mist, and a star over all,

There by the rick, where they thresh, is the drone at an end,

Twilight it is, and I travel the road with my friend.

I think of the friends who are dead, who were dear

long ago in the past,

Beautiful friends who are dead, though I know that

John Masefield

By a Bier-Side

This is a sacred city built of marvellous earth.

Life was lived nobly here to give such beauty birth.

Beauty was in this brain and in this eager hand:

Death is so blind and dumb Death does not understand.

Death drifts the brain with dust and soils the young limbs' glory,

Death makes justice a dream, and strength a traveller's story.

Death drives the lovely soul to wander under the sky.

Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die.

John Masefield

Lollingdon Downs VIII

THE Kings go by with jewled crowns;

Their horses gleam, their banners shake, their spears are many.

The sack of many-peopled towns

Is all their dream:

The way they take

Leaves but a ruin in the brake,

And, in the furrow that the plowmen make,

A stampless penny, a tale, a dream.

John Masefield

Night Is On The Downland

Night is on the downland, on the lonely moorland,

On the hills where the wind goes over sheep-bitten turf,

Where the bent grass beats upon the unplowed poorland

And the pine-woods roar like the surf.

Here the Roman lived on the wind-barren lonely,

Dark now and haunted by the moorland fowl;

None comes here now but the peewit only,

And moth-like death in the owl.

John Masefield

Sonnet

Flesh, I have knocked at many a dusty door,

Gone down full many a midnight lane,

Probed in old walls and felt along the floor,

Pressed in blind hope the lighted window-pane,

But useless all, though sometimes when the moon

Was full in heaven and the sea was full,

Along my body's alleys came a tune

Played in the tavern by the Beautiful.

John Masefield

The Passing Strange

Out of the earth to rest or range

Perpetual in perpetual change,

The unknown passing through the strange.

Water and saltness held together

To tread the dust and stand the weather,

And plough the field and stretch the tether,

To pass the wine-cup and be witty,

Water the sands and build the city,

John Masefield

Seven Poems

Here in the self is all that man can know

Of Beauty, all the wonder, all the power,

All the unearthly colour, all the glow,

Here in the self which withers like a flower;

Here in the self which fades as hours pass,

And droops and dies and rots and is forgotten

Sooner, by ages, than the mirroring glass

John Masefield