John Masefield Quotes - Page 3

The social states of human kinds Are made by multitudes of minds, And after multitudes of years A little human growth appears Worth having, even to the soul Who sees most plain it's not the whole.

Man cannot call the brimming instant back; Time's an affair of instants spun to days; If man must make an instant gold, or black, Let him, he may; but Time must go his ways. Life may be duller for an instant's blaze. Life's an affair of instants spun to years, Instants are only cause of all these tears.

Lord, give to me who are old and rougher The things that little children suffer, And let keep bright and undefiled The young years of the little child.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, 3 hours in a seasick steamer, & after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak 3 times, & then be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

Poetry is a mixture of common sense, which not all have, with an uncommon sense, which very few have.

So death obscures your gentle form, So memory strives to make the darkness bright; And, in that heap of rocks, your body lies, Part of the island till the planet ends, My gentle comrade, beautiful and wise, Part of this crag this bitter surge offends, While I, who pass, a little obscure thing, War with this force, and breathe, and am its king.

I must go down to the sea again For the call of the running tide It's a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.

Love is a flame to burn out human wills, Love is a flame to set the will on fire, Love is a flame to cheat men into mire.

Off Cape Horn there are but two kinds of weather, neither one of them a pleasant kind.

The Thames is a wretched river after the Mersey and the ships are not like Liverpool ships and the docks are barren of beauty ... it is a beastly hole after Liverpool; for Liverpool is the town of my heart and I would rather sail a mudflat there than command a clipper out of London

In the dark room where I began My mother's life made me a man. Through all the months of human birth Her beauty fed my common earth. I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir, But through the death of some of her.

When the last sea is sailed and last shallow charted, When the last field is reaped and the last harvest stored, When the last fire is out and the last guest departed Grant the last prayer that I pray, Be good to me, O Lord.

Each one could be a Jesus mild, Each one has been a little child, A little child with laughing look, A lovely white unwritten book; A book that God will take, my friend, As each goes out at journey's end.

But he has gone, A nation's memory and veneration, Among the radiant, ever venturing on, Somewhere, with morning, as such spirits will.

What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt Held in cohesion by unresting cells, Which work they know not why, which never halt, Myself unwitting where their Master dwells?

When Life knocks at the door no one can wait, When Death makes his arrest we have to go.

The corn that makes the holy bread By which the soul of man is fed, The holy bread, the food unpriced, Thy everlasting mercy, Christ.

From '41 to '51I was my folk's contrary son;I bit my father's hand right throughAnd broke my mother's heart in two.

The Lord who gave us Earth and Heaven Takes that as thanks for all He's given. The book he lent is given back All blotted red and smutted black.