The Century's Finest Poet

'Death-warnings'

I saw the ramparts of my native land
One time so strong, now dropping in decay,
Their strength destroyed by this new age's way
That has worn out and rotted what was grand.
I went into the fields; there I could see
The sun drink up the waters newly thawed;
And on the hills the moaning cattle pawed,
Their miseries robbed the light of day for me.

I went into my house; I saw how spotted,
Decaying things made that old home their prize;
My withered walking-staff had come to bend.
I felt the age had won; my sword was rotted;
And there was nothing on which to set my eyes
That was not a reminder of the end.


This year marks 40 since the passing of one of the century's finest writers - one of the few our era can bestow to posterity without shame or embarrassment. Unlike so many authors since the blunder of Modernism, he didn't spend his career in a kind of arrested adolescence, tinkering and playing in public, producing effects through sophistic trivialities, or in the kind of critic-friendly work that holds an appeal only when considered conceptually. He plunged into the heart of literature: he didn't try and rationalise from the outside what might be good (an activity, like its brother socialism, that has never worked, and is responsible not merely for Stalin, but for nearly all bad poetry too). No, he wrote with reference to his heart, to his instinctive taste, and to the truth of God and the beauty of God's creation; and wrote, and wrote, and was victorious. He is responsible for two charming books for the young, two general novels, and a kind of poetry that overturns one's stomach with its excellence.

His name was John Masefield. He was Poet Laureate. Few remember him. A pretty decent Selected Poems is now available. Do read it. (See Gutenberg for some of his work online, too).