One may search these "Salt Water Ballads" through from the opening line
of "Consecration" to "The Song At Parting" and find no faint suggestion
of that deep religious glory of "The Everlasting Mercy." This book was
written, even as Masefield says, "in my boyhood; all of it in my
youth." He has not caught the deeper meaning of life yet--the spiritual
meaning--although he has caught the social meaning, just as Markham has
caught it.