THE SOUL PSYCHOLOGY OF HIS YOUTH IN "SALT WATER BALLADS"
One may search these "Salt Water Ballads" through from the opening line
of "Consecration" to "The Song At Parting" and find no faint suggestion
of that deep religious glory of "The Everlasting Mercy." This book was
written, even as Masefield says, "in my boyhood; all of it in my
youth." He has not caught the deeper meaning of life yet--the spiritual
meaning--although he has caught the social meaning, just as Markham has
caught it.
1. _Social Consciousness_
Even in "Consecration" we hear the challenging ring of a young voice
who has wandered over the face of the earth and has taken his place
with the "Outcast," has cast his lot with the sailor, the stoker, the
tramp.
"Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road,
The slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad,
The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load.
"Others may sing of the wine and the wealth, and the mirth,
The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;
Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust, and the scum of the earth!
* * * * *
"Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould.
Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold--
Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tales be told. Amen."
Salt Water Poems and Ballads.
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