I love John Masefield’s poetry, the more I read the more I admire his work. I guess most people of my age would be familiar with his famous poems, Sea Fever and Cargoes, for example; they were in every anthology we had as children, in school and at home. I would also guess that much fewer people are familiar with his sonnets.,
XIII
If I could get within this changing I,
This ever altering thing which yet persists,
Keeping the features it is reckoned by,
While each component atom breaks or twists,
If, wandering past strange groups of shifting forms,
Cells at their hidden marvels hard at work,
Pale from much toil, or red from sudden storms,
I might attain to where the Rulers lurk.
If, pressing past the guards in those grey gates,
The brain’s most folded intertwisted shell,
I might attain to that which alters fates,
The King, the supreme self, the Master Cell,
Then, on Man’s earthly peak, I might behold
The unearthly self beyond, unguessed, untold.
Lois Elsden 