The Rider at the Gate -- John Masefield

Guest poem sent in by Suresh Ramasubramanian

(Poem #1251) The Rider at the Gate A windy night was blowing on Rome, The cressets guttered on Caesar's home, The fish-boats, moored at the bridge, were breaking The rush of the river to yellow foam. The hinges whined to the shutters shaking, When clip-clop-clep came a horse-hoof raking The stones of the road at Caesar's gate; The spear-butts jarred at the guard's awaking. 'Who goes there?' said the guard at the gate. 'What is the news, that you ride so late?' 'News most pressing, that must be spoken To Caesar alone, and that cannot wait.' 'The Caesar sleeps; you must show a token That the news suffice that he be awoken. What is the news, and whence do you come? For no light cause may his sleep be broken.' 'Out of the dark of the sands I come, From the dark of death, with news for Rome. A word so fell that it must be uttered Though it strike the soul of the Caesar dumb.' Caesar turned in his bed and muttered, With a struggle for breath the lamp-flame guttered; Calpurnia heard her husband moan: 'The house is falling, The beaten men come into their own.' 'Speak your word,' said the guard at the gate; 'Yes, but bear it to Caesar straight, Say, "Your murderers' knives are honing, Your killers' gang is lying in wait." 'Out of the wind that is blowing and moaning, Through the city palace and the country loaning, I cry, "For the world's sake, Caesar, beware, And take this warning as my atoning. '"Beware of the Court, of the palace stair, Of the downcast friend who speaks so fair, Keep from the Senate, for Death is going on many men's feet to meet you there." 'I, who am dead, have ways of knowing Of the crop of death that the quick are sowing. I, who was Pompey, cry it aloud From the dark of death, from the wind blowing. 'I, who was Pompey, once was proud, Now I lie in the sand without a shroud; I cry to Caesar out of my pain, "Caesar beware, your death is vowed."' The light grew grey on the window-pane, The windcocks swung in a burst of rain, The window of Caesar flung unshuttered, The horse-hoofs died into wind again. Caesar turned in his bed and muttered, With a struggle for breath the lamp-flame guttered; Calpurnia heard her husband moan: 'The house is falling, The beaten men come into their own.' -- John Masefield

I have had a nightmare or two in my time (the one I had yesterday was
about work, lots of work, piling up on top of me - proof positive that I
need a vacation sometime soon).

That nightmare suddenly gave me the idea of a nightmare / dream theme
for Minstrels.

Poems like the one above.

Pompey's ghost coming to warn Caesar of his impending downfall.
Incredibly eerie atmosphere, made even more so by the tone of this poem.

My other choices for this theme include -

1. RL Stevenson's "Ticonderoga" (that is a bit long but worth running)

2. Robert Graves, "A Child's Nightmare" (already covered in minstrels
   poem #663)

any more suggestions?

          srs

Sea-Change -- John Masefield

(Poem #758) Sea-Change "Goneys an' gullies an' all o' the birds o' the sea They ain't no birds, not really", said Billy the Dane. "Not mollies, nor gullies, nor goneys at all", said he, "But simply the sperrits of mariners livin' again. "Them birds goin' fishin' is nothin' but the souls o' the drowned, Souls o' the drowned, an' the kicked as are never no more An' that there haughty old albatross cruisin' around, Belike he's Admiral Nelson or Admiral Noah. "An' merry's the life they are living. They settle and dip, They fishes, they never stands watches, they waggle their wings; When a ship comes by, they fly to look at the ship To see how the nowaday mariners manages things. "When freezing aloft in a snorter I tell you I wish -- (Though maybe it ain't like a Christian) -- I wish I could be A haughty old copper-bound albatross dipping for fish And coming the proud over all o' the birds o' the sea." -- John Masefield

Question: Should narrowness of theme be held against a poet?
Answer: Not when the theme is handled as magnificently as in Masefield's
poems of the sea.

John Masefield's ballads are astonishingly vivid. Read them, and you can
feel the salt spray in your face, taste the brine in your mouth, hear the
cawing of the gulls, the rip and crash of the storm, the stillness of the
morning after... Masefield may have written other kinds of verse (most
especially, during his lengthy tenure as Poet Laureate), but it's surely
poems like "Sea-Change" that he'll be remembered for. And rightly so.

thomas.

[Minstrels Links]

The title of today's poem is from The Tempest, wherein Ariel expresses a
similar conceit. You can read the entire exquisite passage at poem #16

Other excerpts from Shakespeare's last play to have featured on the
Minstrels include "Our revels now are ended", Poem #126, and "Admired
Miranda", Poem #413.

Eliot's Wasteland makes several references to The Tempest; see poem #354

And finally, other Masefield poems:
"Sea Fever", Poem #27
"Cargoes", Poem #74
"Trade Winds", Poem #555
"Beauty", Poem #695
"Night is on the Downland", Poem #702

Night Is On The Downland -- John Masefield

Guest poem submitted by Vikram Doctor:

(Poem #702) 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. Beauty was here in on this beetle-droning downland; The thought of a Caesar in the purple came From the palace by the Tiber in the Roman townland To this wind-swept hill with no name. Lonely Beauty came here and was here in sadness, Brave as a thought on the frontier of the mind, In the camp of the wild upon the march of madness, The bright-eyed Queen of the Blind. Now where Beauty was are the wind-withered gorses, Moaning like old men in the hill-wind's blast; The flying sky is dark with running horses, And the night is full of the past. -- John Masefield

A very vivid poem from Masefield. You can almost see the wind pouring the
clouds past, whipping past your ears in the dark. "Brave as a thought on the
frontier of the mind" is a line that has particularly stuck in my mind.

Masefield, by the way, is one of those poets best read in anthology. I once
tried reading a collected works, and tired quite fast. And I read this in
one of the best anthologies I've ever found: The Pocket Book Of Modern
Verse, edited by Oscar Williams.

I bought it years ago in a place that has now sadly vanished - Moore Market
in Madras. This was a wonderful old red brick structure from the Raj, in the
ornate Indo-Saracenic style you get in Madras. It was a warren of shops of
all kinds, but the ones I stuck to were all in the circle of old book shops
that ringed the Market. (Very sadly, it burned down - or was burned down,
it's never been precisely solved - some years later)

I was quite young then and just starting to read poetry as opposed to
mugging it in school. And this book I think was the perfect introduction.
Williams' definition of modern is a broad one, going from Walt Whitman,
Matthew Arnold and W.S.Gilbert, via Wallace Steves and Ezra Pound,
A.E.Housman and John Masefield all the way to Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes.
(No Eliot though, his estate didn't allow it).

This may seem too broad a sweep, but I think it was best for the reader I
then was. The traditional poems like this Masefield one were easy to
understand, so I wasn't put off and form the impression so many people have
of poetry has weird and difficult. Williams steered clear though of the more
mawkish traditional poems and mixed with them were always the more
challenging ones.

It started right from Whitman, whose burst of pure energy got the collection
off to a high power start. There were the formal melodies of Wallace Steves,
more energy from Ezra Pound, and as the book progressed poets who I didn't
always understand then, but came to appreciate over the years.

The other reason I liked the book was the photographs. Tiny, sepia, passport
ones of the poets' faces. I can't say why but it somehow made it more read
and vivid, it added some quality of life, to have faces one could connect
with poems. Perhaps it was a bit specious, but there seemed to be a link.
The melancholy of Housman reflected in the bleakness of his gaze. Edna
St.Vincent Millay looked as beautiful and doomed as her poems suggest.

I wasn't the only one who felt this way. Years later I read an article by a
poet from, I think, the Soviet Union. Some country under censorship, with
access to Western works curtailed. Somehow he got a copy of this same book,
and for him too the faces came to matter along with the poems. The book was
a link to a wider world of poetry, and the faces helped reinforce their
iconic stature.

I've read many other good anthologies since then, learning to appreciate the
anthologist's art. Palgrave's classic one, for example. Or The Faber Book of
Modern Verse, for example, which finally introduced me to the Wasteland. Or
a more personal one, like Lord Wavell's Other Men's Flower's (both because
its really nice, as well as for the thought of him reading them in between
all the frustrating negotiations for Indian Independence). But, though it's
old now and falling to pieces now so I can't really read it much, The Pocket
Book remains one of the best anthologies for me.

Vikram.

Beauty -- John Masefield

(Poem #695) Beauty I have seen dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain: I have seen the lady April bringing the daffodils, Bringing the springing grass and the soft warm April rain. I have heard the song of the blossoms and the old chant of the sea, And seen strange lands from under the arched white sails of ships; But the loveliest thing of beauty God ever has shown to me, Are her voice, and her hair, and eyes, and the dear red curve of her lips. -- John Masefield

As I have noted before, one of the outstanding features of Masefield's
poetry is the sense of beauty that permeates them; I had, therefore, high
hopes for a poem he explicitly titled 'Beauty'.

However, the poem proved sadly disappointing in that respect. Oh, it's a
nice enough poem - certainly worth a read (as is most of Masefield). It
misses, though, the sheer magic of 'Sea Fever' or 'Cargoes', the music of
phrases like 'dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores', or the
quiet vividness of poems like 'The West Wind'.

The poem has interesting echoes in some of his other pieces - compare "and
April's in the West Wind, and daffodils" (The West Wind), the sea and ship
imagery from a number of poems, and, most interestingly, the ending of
'Roadways', where he describes his road to the sea as travelling "in quest
of that one beauty/ God put me here to find". It is true that a lot of
Masefield's poems have recurrent themes and images (and are none the worse
for that); still, it is an interesting (albeit far-fetched) conjecture that,
in one of his rare love poems, Masefield is deliberately examining some of
the things he has lauded in other poems, and stating that even these fall
short of 'her voice, and her hair, and eyes, and the dear red curve of her
lips'.

Afterthought:

 I was reminded today of Yvette Sangiorgio's comment (on Poem #651) that
 knowing the date when a poem is written is often vital to its understanding
 - indeed, knowing which volume of Masefield's this poem appeared in would
 have been most helpful. Sadly, I was unable to find the information
 anywhere online.

Links:

  I am reminded of Kipling's "The Sea and the Hills"           (Poem #29)
  and, in a roundabout sort of way, Shakespeare's "My
  Mistress's Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun"                    (Poem #44)

The theme itself is a common one, and there are doubtless several other
poems that echo one aspect of it or another.

We've run a few other Masefield poems; you can find a biography at poem #27

-martin

Trade Winds -- John Masefield

(Poem #555) Trade Winds In the harbor, in the island, in the Spanish Seas, Are the tiny white houses and the orange trees, And day-long, night-long, the cool and pleasant breeze Of the steady Trade Winds blowing. There is the red wine, the nutty Spanish ale, The shuffle of the dancers, the old salt's tale, The squeaking fiddle, and the soughing in the sail Of the steady Trade Winds blowing. And o' nights there's fire-flies and the yellow moon, And in the ghostly palm-trees the sleepy tune Of the quiet voice calling me, the long low croon Of the steady Trade Winds blowing. -- John Masefield

Masefield is often thought of as (almost exclusively) a 'sea poet', one whose
descriptive prowess and ability to evoke 'atmosphere' far outweigh his
intellectual and emotional insight. The judgement may be slightly unfair - after
all, his verse did turn markedly more introspective and austere after he became
Poet Laureate - but the fact remains that masterpieces like 'Sea Fever' [1],
'Cargoes' [2] and today's poem are likely to be remembered long after his more
'serious' works are forgotten. And rightfully so, in my opinion: Laureates (and
their peculiar brand of poetry) may come and go, but magic like Masefield's
lives on forever.

thomas.

[1] poem #27
[2] poem #74

[Bio]

  b. June 1, 1878, Ledbury, Herefordshire, Eng.
  d. May 12, 1967, near Abingdon, Berkshire

Poet, best known for his poems of the sea, Salt-Water Ballads (1902, including
"Sea Fever" and "Cargoes"), and for his long narrative poems, such as The
Everlasting Mercy (1911), which shocked literary orthodoxy with its phrases of a
colloquial coarseness hitherto unknown in 20th-century English verse.

Educated at King's School, Warwick, Masefield was apprenticed aboard a
windjammer that sailed around Cape Horn. He left the sea after that voyage and
spent several years living precariously in the United States. His work there in
a carpet factory is described in his autobiography, In the Mill (1941). He
returned to England, worked for a time as a journalist for the Manchester
Guardian, and settled in London. After he succeeded Robert Bridges as poet
laureate in 1930, his poetry became more austere.

Other of Masefield's long narrative poems are Dauber (1913), which concerns the
eternal struggle of the visionary against ignorance and materialism, and Reynard
the Fox (1919), which deals with many aspects of rural life in England. He also
wrote novels of adventure--Sard Harker (1924), Odtaa (1926), and Basilissa
(1940)--sketches, and works for children. His other works include the poetic
dramas The Tragedy of Nan (1909) and The Tragedy of Pompey the Great (1910), as
well as a further autobiographical volume, So Long to Learn (1952). Masefield
was awarded the Order of Merit in 1935.

        -- EB

Cargoes -- John Masefield

(Poem #74) 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, Emeralds, amethysts, Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores. Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rails, pig-lead, Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays. -- John Masefield

A lovely poem, and one that works on several levels. Of course, it is about
progress, and nostalgia, and as such is somewhat unsubtle. But it is also a
poem redolent with beauty; the beauty and mystery of strange and distant
lands, and forever vanished times that linger yet in racial memory, the
sensual, evocative beauty of gems and spices, the beauty of words and
phrases that flow trippingly off the tongue. Masefield was truly a poet who
could both appreciate and recapture the pleasures of the senses - he is far
more descriptive than introspective (compare, for example, Keats' 'To a
Skylark', Wordsworth's 'Daffodils' and Coleridge's 'Kublai Khan' for very
different treatments of this kind of beauty).

Incidentally, this is a lovely poem to recite subvocally - don't quite read
it out loud, but form the words with your mouth as you read them.

Glossary:
  moidore moi.do<e>r. Also 8 moyodore, moedor(e, moydor(e, moider, moidor.
  [Curruptly a. Pg. moeda d'ouro lit. `gold coin' (moeda money, ouro:-L.
  aurum gold). ] A gold coin of Portugal, current in England in the first
  half of the 18th century. In later use, the word survived as a name for
  the sum of 27s., which was approximately the value of the coin. -- OED

m.

Sea Fever -- John Masefield

Borrowing a leaf from Thomas, I'll run a set of three sea poems this week,
beginning with what is doubtless the most famous of them all ...

(Poem #27) 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. I must go down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over. -- John Masefield

Another of those poems that everyone has probably read before, but no less
good for being famous. The simple but beautiful phrases need no commentary,
IMHO, so I'll merely note in passing that the first line is often written
without the 'go' - again, I merely picked the variant I liked better.

Biographical Note:

  MASEFIELD, John (1878-1967). Poet laureate of Great Britain from 1930
  until his death, John Masefield was only 22 years old when he wrote the
  simple and moving lines in his poem 'Sea Fever'. Masefield was born on
  June 1, 1878, in Ledbury, Herefordshire, England. After his father's death
  he was looked after by an uncle. Young Masefield wanted to be a merchant
  marine officer. At 13 he boarded the training ship Conway moored in the
  river Mersey. After two and a half years on the school ship he was
  apprenticed aboard a sailing ship that was bound for Chile by way of Cape
  Horn. In Chile he became ill and had to return to England by steamer. He
  left the sea and spent several years living in the United States, working
  chiefly in a carpet factory.
  [...]
  In 1897 he returned to England determined to succeed as a writer. He
  worked on newspapers at first. But he never forgot his days at sea. He
  returned to them again and again in his poems and stories. He wrote about
  the land too, about typically English things like fox hunting, racing, and
  outdoor life. In 1902 Masefield published his first volume of poems,
  'Salt-Water Ballads'. After that he wrote steadily poems, stories, and
  plays.
        -- Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia

Criticism:

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[1] has
appeared in current literature.
        -- Untermeyer, Louis, ed. 1920. Modern British Poetry.

[1] Excerpt follows - it's too long a poem to run, but i'm glad of the
chance to quote a bit of it. Anyone interested can find the full text at
<[broken link] http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2012/poems/dauber00.html>

      How long the gale had blown he could not tell,
      Only the world had changed, his life had died.
      A moment now was everlasting hell.
      Nature an onslaught from the weather side,
      A withering rush of death, a frost that cried,
      Shrieked, till he withered at the heart; a hail
      Plastered his oilskins with an icy mail....

      "Up!" yelled the Bosun; "up and clear the wreck!"
      The Dauber followed where he led; below
      He caught one giddy glimpsing of the deck
      Filled with white water, as though heaped with snow.
      He saw the streamers of the rigging blow
      Straight out like pennons from the splintered mast,
      Then, all sense dimmed, all was an icy blast.

      Roaring from nether hell and filled with ice,
      Roaring and crashing on the jerking stage,
      An utter bridle given to utter vice,
      Limitless power mad with endless rage
      Withering the soul; a minute seemed an age.
      He clutched and hacked at ropes, at rags of sail,
      Thinking that comfort was a fairy tale,
          -- Masefield, from 'Dauber'

martin