Chances are you either love poetry or hate it, or simply have no use for it. In any case, it’s never going away and might turn up anywhere, in slim volumes and weighty anthologies, or planted randomly amongst the prose in periodicals of all kinds, and heard live at events like “slams” and Presidential inaugurations. Today a poet can vie for any number of awards and contest placings, and there are “honorary” poets of towns and cities, as well as many nations that have their own poet laureates. For now, that might be the highest level one can seek, at least until there’s a poet laureate of the planet or the galaxy or the universe. Poet Laureate of the Milky Way has a nice ring to it, wouldn’t you say?
This brings us to a poem by the one time Poet Laureate of England, John Masefield. The man was quite a literary lion in his day, and perhaps remains well known on his native island, someone to reckon with if you’re an English lit major, but it’s probably not unfair to say he’s somewhat obscure otherwise, especially in the United States. Except for Sea Fever.
What’s Sea Fever? That’s a poem included in his first published collection of verse in 1902, based on his spending most of his late adolescence at sea. It was a life he evidently loved, both for the romance of it and the abundant natural beauty he had witnessed on the oceans, but unfortunately he struggled with seasickness at times, as well as the fact that seamen made little money, toiling at what essentially was kind of a dead-end job.
He left that life for things literary, went on to write novels, more poems and accounts of his experiences during WWI, also lectured in the US where he received honorary degrees from Yale and Harvard. His work was well received by critics, and in typical fashion he won an award, the Edmond de Polignac Prize in 1912, which you may have never heard of but which is a big deal and a definite career boost in certain circles. A lot of literary prizes tend to be like that, and it was no doubt another step towards his becoming Poet Laureate of England in 1930, a post he held until his death in 1967.
Maybe you’ve never read Sea Fever, but at least at some point it was present in perhaps more than a few anthologies, one of which happened to be used by my ninth grade English teacher. It is possible that every ninth-grader in the Los Angeles area schools might’ve also had the opportunity to be blessed (or cursed) in this way, but the intricacies of text book distribution in that gigantic city, of which we were just a suburb, remain unknown to this day. Sea Fever : a blessing or a curse? Read it and decide for yourself:
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 gray 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.
So? Kind of old-school, for sure, romantic sentiments and vivid imagery, and it rhymes! Hey, it’s from a 24 year-old, writing in 1902! Like any form of artistic expression, poetry has been through its changes over time, and today this very old-school reader finds much of it quite cerebral and ruminative, where of course rhyming is so passé nowadays, except for song lyrics. It seems quite possible Sea Fever would do fine as a song, if the melody somehow nailed it.
The only two other poems from that anthology I can recall were Recuerdo by Edna St. Vincent Millay, about merrily riding a ferry for hours back and forth with a friend – yet another piece about the joys of being on a boat – and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. Mr. Frost happened to also be the Poet Laureate of Vermont, maybe not up there with the Poet Laureate of England, but who’s to say? His poem, by the way, also had a last line (actually two) about going to sleep, same as Sea Fever. Joyce Kilmer’s Trees might’ve also made the cut, but memory fails at this point. It would’ve fit right in.
The point is that the poems in that high school anthology were pretty clear when it comes to emotions and related imagery, with a strong appeal to the senses. And none were especially geared towards teens, having been written by adults for adult sensibilities. Whether they scored any points with many of my fellow classmates is open to question, and if there was some kind of exam about them it might’ve squelched forever the potential interest a few might’ve had for this particular form of expression.
What matters here is that I never forgot Sea Fever, along with several others from that book. Maybe it helps if one is a romantic, at least about some things. And as one who ventures outdoors all seasons of the year, the line about the wind and the whetted knife often comes to mind. Nobody’s ever expressed the truth about the wind chill factor better than Masefield. Sea Fever is also a poem about longing, about getting back to something you miss dearly.
It’s also corny in its way, which is one of the risks of being an enthusiastic and youthful and romantic poet, all three of which Masefield was guilty when he wrote it. So what? A few years after it was written, a parody appeared by Arthur Guiterman, a cofounder and president of the Poetry Society of America in 1925-26, entitled Sea-Sickness. Chances are Guiterman knew Masefield and was aware of the poor man’s struggles with the waves’ effects on the GI system.
I must go down to the seas again, where the billows romp and reel,
And all I ask is a large ship, that rides on an even keel,
And a mild breeze and a broad deck with a slight list to leeward,
And a clean chair in a snug nook and a nice, kind steward.
I must go down to the seas again, the sport of wind and tide,
As the gray wave and the green wave play leapfrog over the side.
And all I ask is a glassy calm with a bone-dry scupper,
And a good book and a warm rug and a light, plain supper.
I must go down to the seas again, though there I’m a total loss,
And I can’t say which is worst: the plunge, the roll, the toss.
But all I ask is a safe retreat in a bar well tended,
And a soft berth and a smooth course till the long trip’s ended.
So is this respectful, playful, or kind of mean? Decide for yourself. The fact is, famous old-school rhyming poetry invites things like parodies and tributes and imitation, with all manner of intentions. I invite you to seek out parodies of Kilmer’s Trees, which is especially vulnerable to this treatment, and one can debate whether the original might have tongue-in-cheek aspects of its own. And let’s not think about the song version, though if you’re a big fan of that, good for you!
And there’s more! Just a few months ago, Masefield’s effort showed up on the Sunday comics page, of all places, in Arlo and Janis. Had cartoonist Jimmy Johnson used the same text back in his high school days? Sea Fever might turn up anywhere, it seems. The dominant theme and inspiration, here, has something to do with longing, specifically the longing of springtime, and in our household that means a longing to get back to the garden, and for some more comfortable cycling weather, after many months of shorter rides and constricting clothing and too many days where the wind was like a whetted knife.
So, inspired by the one-time Poet Laureate of England and a cartoonist, I humbly offer the following:
Road Fever
I must get back on the roads again, to the twisty roads and the straight,
And all I ask is a good wheel that can roll me to my fate,
And the hill’s hurt and the truck’s roar and the tailwind’s shoving,
And serene peace at the best times, that’s a kind of loving.
I must get back on the roads again, for the call of the spinning wheel
Is a true call to the fine things passing miles reveal.
And all I ask is a wild day of the four winds’ making
When the leaves fly and the crows dive from the tree limbs shaking.
I must get back on the roads again to the simple pedaled way,
Where the miles passed and the work done are the measure of the day,
And all I ask is to share it all, with a lively riding friend,
And a hot bath and a soft couch at journey’s welcome end.
Dirt Fever
I must get down in the dirt again, to the garden’s soil and the loam,
And all I ask is a good plot of the kind the worms call home.
And the sun’s warmth and the wind’s kiss and the soft rain falling,
And the new growth on a spring day and the robins calling.
I must get down in the dirt again, for the call of the waiting soil
Is a true call of the new spring no April frost can spoil.
And all I ask is a dry day and a soft breeze blowing,
When the tossed weeds and the raked soil get the whole thing going.
I must get down in the dirt again and the work of careful hands,
Where the earth’s way and the plants’ way make the clearest of demands.
And all I ask is some good seed that will sprout true,
And great eats from a fine yield when it’s all through.
Worthy, respectful tributes? Great or fun or at least adequate poetry? Does it matter?
