John Masefield is sometimes dismissed as a poet who writes stuff for children’s anthologies… he is so much more. His breadth of subject matter, his scope, the imagery he brings alive for his readers, the fact that he was Poet Laureate, must elevate him to the highest ranks.
The more you read this sonnet , the more you see into it… it is full of imagery, ‘the assaulted wall’, ‘the faithful fool who follows the torn flag’, ‘the woman marching by the beaten man’. ‘soiled shreds of what the brain conceived’…
Masefield was Poet Laureate from 1930 to his death in 1967, but this sequence of sonnets were from some time earlier, 1915, the year he was serving in France as a medical orderly although he could have exempted himself from service because of his age ( he was thirty-seven)
IV
Men are made human by the mighty fall
The mighty passion led to, these remain.
The despot, at the last assaulted wall,
By long disaster is made man again,
The faithful fool who follows the torn flag,
The woman marching by the beaten man,
Make with their truth atonement for the brag,
And earn a pity for the too proud plan.
For in disaster, in the ruined will,In the soiled shreds of what the brain conceived,
Something above the wreck is steady still,
Bright above all that cannot be retrieved,
Grandeur of soul, a touching of the star
That good days cover but by which we are.
John Masefield
Lois Elsden 