[15] From _Fires_ by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson. Copyright, 1912, by The
Macmillan Co. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.
[16] From _Borderlands and Thoroughfares_ by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson.
Copyright, 1915, by The Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission of
the publishers.
_John Masefield_
John Masefield was born June 1, 1878, in Ledbury, Hertfordshire. He
was the son of a lawyer but, being of a restless disposition, he took
to the sea at an early age and became a wanderer for several years. At
one time, in 1895, to be exact, he worked for a few months as a sort
of third assistant barkeeper and dish-washer in Luke O'Connor's
saloon, the Columbia Hotel, in New York City. The place is still there
on the corner of Sixth and Greenwich Avenues.
The results of his wanderings showed in his early works, _Salt-Water
Ballads_ (1902), _Ballads_ (1903), frank and often crude poems of
sailors written in their own dialect, and _A Mainsail Haul_ (1905), a
collection of short nautical stories. In these books Masefield
possibly overemphasized passion and brutality but, underneath the
violence, he captured that highly-colored realism which is the poetry
of life.
It was not until he published _The Everlasting Mercy_ (1911) that he
became famous. Followed quickly by those remarkable long narrative
poems, _The Widow in the Bye Street_ (1912), _Dauber_ (1912), and _The
Daffodil Fields_ (1913), there is in all of these that peculiar blend
of physical exulting and spiritual exaltation that is so striking, and
so typical of Masefield. Their very rudeness is lifted to a plane of
religious intensity. (See Preface.) Pictorially, Masefield is even
more forceful. The finest moment in _The Widow in the Bye Street_ is
the portrayal of the mother alone in her cottage; the public-house
scene and the passage describing the birds following the plough are
the most intense touches in _The Everlasting Mercy_. Nothing more
vigorous and thrilling than the description of the storm at sea in
_Dauber_ has appeared in current literature.
The war, in which Masefield served with the Red Cross in France and on
the Gallipoli peninsula (of which campaign he wrote a study for the
government), softened his style; _Good Friday and Other Poems_ (1916)
is as restrained and dignified a collection as that of any of his
contemporaries. _Reynard the Fox_ (1919) is the best of his new manner
with a return of the old vivacity.
Masefield has also written several novels of which _Multitude and
Solitude_ (1909) is the most outstanding; half a dozen plays, ranging
from the classical solemnity of _Pompey the Great_ to the hot and racy
_Tragedy of Nan_; and one of the freshest, most creative critiques of
_Shakespeare_ (1911) in the last generation.