Lollingdon Downs, and Other Poems, with Sonnets

By John Masefield

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Lollingdon Downs, and Other Poems, with Sonnets" by John Masefield. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Sep 16, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547345398

John Masefield

John Masefield was a well-known English poet and novelist. After boarding school, Masefield took to a life at sea where he picked up many stories, which influenced his decision to become a writer. Upon returning to England after finding work in New York City, Masefield began publishing his poetry in periodicals, and then eventually in collections. In 1915, Masefield joined the Allied forces in France and served in a British army hospital there, despite being old enough to be exempt from military service. After a brief service, Masefield returned to Britain and was sent overseas to the United States to research the American opinion on the war. This trip encouraged him to write his book Gallipoli, which dealt with the failed Allied attacks in the Dardanelles, as a means of negating German propaganda in the Americas. Masefield continued to publish throughout his life and was appointed as Poet Laureate in 1930. Masefield died in 1967 the age of 88.

Book preview

John Masefield

Lollingdon Downs, and Other Poems, with Sonnets

EAN 8596547345398

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

XXIII.

XXIV.

XXV.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXVIII.

XXIX.

XXX.

XXXI.

XXXII.

XXXIII.

XXXIV.

XXXV.

XXXVI.

XXXVII.

XXXVIII.

XXXIX.

XL.

XLI.

XLII.

XLIII.

XLIV.

XLV.

XLVI.

XLVII.

XLVIII.

XLIX.

L.

LI.

LII.

LIII.

LIV.

LV.

LVI.

LVII.

LVIII.

LIX.

LX.

LXI.

LXII.

LXIII.

LXIV.

LXV.

LXVI.

LXVII.

LXVIII.

LIX.

LX.

I.

Table of Contents

So I have known this life,

These beads of coloured days,

This self the string.

What is this thing?

Not beauty, no; not greed,

O, not indeed;

Not all, though much;

Its colour is not such.

It has no eyes to see,

It has no ears;

It is a red hour's war

Followed by tears.

It is an hour of time,

An hour of road,

Flesh is its goad;

Yet, in the sorrowing lands,

Women and men take hands.

O earth, give us the corn,

Come rain, come sun;

We men who have been born

Have tasks undone.

Out of this earth

Comes the thing birth,

The thing unguessed, unwon.

II.

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O wretched man, that for a little mile

Crawls beneath heaven for his brother's blood,

Whose days the planets number with their style,

To whom all earth is slave, all living, food!

O withering man, within whose folded shell

Lies yet the seed, the spirit's quickening corn,

That Time and Sun will change out of the cell

Into green meadows, in the world unborn!

If Beauty be a dream, do but resolve

And fire shall come, that in the stubborn clay

Works to make perfect till the rocks dissolve,

The barriers burst, and Beauty takes her way:

Beauty herself, within whose blossoming Spring

Even wretched man shall clap his hands and sing.

III.

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Out of the special cell's most special sense

Came the suggestion when the light was sweet;

All skill, all beauty, all magnificence,

Are hints so caught, man's glimpse of the complete.

And, though the body rots, that sense survives;

Being of life's own essence, it endures

(Fruit of the spirit's tillage in men's lives)

Round all this ghost that wandering flesh immures.

That is our friend, who, when the iron brain

Assails, or the earth clogs, or the sun hides,

Is the good God to whom none calls in vain,

Man's Achieved Good, which, being Life, abides:

The man-made God, that man in happy breath

Makes in despite of Time and dusty Death.

IV.

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You are the link which binds us each to each.

Passion, or too much thought, alone can end

Beauty, the ghost, the spirit's common speech,

Which man's red longing left us for our friend.

Even in the blinding war I have known this,

That flesh is but the carrier of a ghost

Who, through his longing, touches that which