Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: August 22, 2024
Although this is the latest in publication of our poet's works, it sounds as if it were written years ago, before he had attained the mastery so evident in The Widow in the Bye Street. It will add little to the author's reputation. I do not think Mr. Masefield has received sufficient credit for his prose fiction.
It is significant that this is one of the six poems excepted by Mr. Masefield from the mass of Wordsworthian mediocrity. Shortly after its appearance, some one read it aloud to an intelligent woman; she sobbed unrestrainedly; then, recovering herself, said shamefacedly, "After all, it isn't poetry."
It is probable that Joseph Conrad became a far more potent influence on the imagination of Mr. Masefield than any one other author; though he was assuredly not content to follow any single example, and began steadily to experiment and to strike out his own line.
They refuse to remain quiet. They insist on taking the poem into their own hands, and running away with it. When we are reading The Widow in the Bye Street we realize that Mr. Masefield has studied with some profit the art of narrative verse as displayed by Chaucer.
This is certainly an interesting way of putting the doctrine of analysis and synthesis as applied to art. What has Mr. Masefield done then for the advance of poetry? One of his notable services is to have made it so interesting that thousands look forward to a new poem from him as readers look for a new story by a great novelist.
JOHN WILLIAM MACKAIL, Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, author and editor of many volumes dealing with ancient Greek and Roman literature. JOHN MASEFIELD, known chiefly for his long poems of life among the British poor. ALFRED EDWARD WOODLEY MASON, writer of romantic novels, of which "The Four Feathers" and "The Turnstile" are perhaps the best known, and of several popular dramas.
In The Everlasting Mercy we have beautiful passages of description, sharply exciting narration, while the dramatic element is furnished by conversation and what conversation! It differs from ordinary poetry as the sermons of an evangelist differ from the sermons of Bishops. Mr. Masefield is a natural-born dramatist.
He is far indeed from possessing the splendid lyrical gift of John Masefield; he has nothing of the literary quality of William Watson. He writes neither of romantic buccaneers nor of golden old books. But he is close to the grimy millions. He writes the short and simple annals of the poor. He is a poet of the people, and seems to have taken a vow that we shall not forget them.
I mean the teacher who by ironic thrust and visible contempt destroys the faith of youth in the literary present without imparting more than a pallid interest in the past. I mean the essayist who in 1911 described Masefield as an unsound and dangerous radical in verse, and in 1921 accepts him as the standard "modern" poet by whom his degenerate successors are to be measured.
These Australians have had no master in their lives but the pitiless drought; they respect not Kings, but they love a real man who knows not fear and is kind to a horse. Masefield said of them in "Gallipoli": "They were in the pink of condition and gave a damn for no one!" There is a certain hospital in London provided by a certain grand lady for convalescent Australians.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking